Peripatetic

Peripatetic (pronounced per-uh-puh-tet-ik)

(1) Walking or travelling about; itinerant, wandering, roving, a vagrant.

(2) Of or of or relating to Aristotle, who taught philosophy while walking in the Lyceum of ancient Athens (with initial capital letter).

(3) A member of the Aristotelian school (with initial capital letter).

(4) Of or relating to the Aristotelian school of philosophy (with initial capital letter) so named because Aristotle, who used to teach philosophy while walking about the Lyceum in ancient Athens

(5) A person who walks or travels about.

(6) In the British educational system, one employed in two or more educational establishments and travelling from one to another; applied also to football coaches, used also as a wry reference to the pattern of them going from club to club, repeatedly sacked and hired.

1400-1450: From the French péripatétique, from the Latin peripatēticus, from the Ancient Greek περιπατητικός (peripatētikós) (given to walking around (especially while teaching)), from περιπατέω (peripatéō) (I walk around), the construct being περί (peri) (around) + πατέω (patéō) (I walk); in Greek texts from antiquity, peripatein (to pace to and fro) was commonly used.  Basis of the whole thing was Aristotle's custom of teaching while strolling through the Lyceum in Athens.  In fourteenth century Old French, the word was perypatetique, imported directly from the Medieval Latin peripateticus (pertaining to the disciples or philosophy of Aristotle)  In English, the meaning in the philosophical sense began to be used in the 1560s and in the literal sense from the 1610s (person who wanders about).  The adjective form (walking about from place to place; itinerant) emerged in the 1640, often humorously tinged.  Related forms are the adverb peripatetically and the noun peripateticism.  The old alternative spelling peripatetick is obsolete.  Charles Dickens (1812–1870) extended the meaning in Our Mutual Friend (1865), using it in a figurative sense to mean “rambling” or “long-winded”, describing someone who tended to long to meander around the topics sometimes never quite reaching the point.  Peripatetic is a noun is a noun & adjective, peripateticism is a noun and peripatetically is an adverb; the noun plural is peripatetics.

Saint Thomas Aquinas (circa 1710) by José Risueño (1665–1721).

The Peripatetic axiom is Nihil est in intellectu quod non sit prius in sensu (Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses).  It appears in Questiones disputatae de veritate (Disputed Questions on Truth) (1256-1259), a collection of twenty-nine disputed questions on aspects of faith and the human condition by the Italian Dominican theologian Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274).

Aquinas derived the principle from Aristotle’s Peripatetic school of philosophy.  Aquinas insists the existence of God could be proved by reasoning from “sense data”, an argument he developed using a variation of the Aristotelian notion of the intellectus agens (active intellect) which he defined as the ability of the mind to abstract universal meanings from specific empirical data.  The essential idea that human experience can be based only on sensory input does sound reasonable, after all, what choice do people have?  Such however was the reverence in the West for Aquinas that his writings on the matter for centuries influenced not only the theological question but also the interpretation of Aristotle.

Peripatetic Painting (2015) by Charles Yates (b 1941).

What Aquinas calls the Peripatetic axiom is his distillation of Aristotelian thought, not a quote or even a paraphrasing from antiquity but it is anyway certainly a “disputed question”.  Regarding the proposition “nothing is in the intellect that was not previously in sense” he notes:  "That axiom is to be understood as applying only to our intellect, which receives its knowledge from things. For a thing is led by gradual steps from its own material conditions to the immateriality of the intellect through the mediation of the immateriality of sense. Consequently, whatever is in our intellect must have previously been in the senses. This, however, does not take place in the divine intellect.”

So ensued centuries of argument between those who maintained empiricism was no part of the way Aquinas reconciled revealed religion with Aristotelian thought and those who found Saint Thomas perhaps the proto-empiricist in the sense (1) he held all our ideas are derived from experience so (2) by definition there can be nothing in the intellect not previously in the senses and (3) that this was implicit in Aristotle.  Despite the implications of that, most however seemed to conclude he did not think all knowledge either consists of sense experience or is inferred inductively from experience.  From all this, although some remained still unconvinced by his position the existence of God could be proved by reasoning alone, few were unimpressed by the intellectual gymnastics it took to get there.

A peripatetic existence; Lindsay Lohan wandering the palnet: Istanbul, Nice, Los Angeles & Mykonos (top row), Dubai, Athens, London & Tokyo (middle row) and Washington DC, Melbourne, New York & Venice (bottom row).

Solemncholy

Solemncholy (pronounced sol-uhm-kol-ee)

(1) Solemn; serious.

(2) Solemn and melancholic.

1772: The construct was solemn +‎ (melan)choly.  The element –choly was never a standard suffix and was a Middle English variant of –colie used in French.  The Middle English adjective solemn dated from the late thirteenth century and was from solemne & solempne, from either Old French or directly from the Late Latin sōlennis & sōlempnis or the Classical Latin sōlemnis, a variant of sollemnis (consecrated, holy; performed or celebrated according to correct religious forms) which has always been of obscure origin although Roman scholars thought it could have come only from sollus (whole; complete), the derivative adjective formed by appending the noun annus (year), thus the idea of sollemnis meaning “taking place every year”.  Not all modern etymologists are convinced by that but acknowledge “some assimilation via folk-etymology is possible”.  In English, the extension of meaning from “annual events; sacred rites, ceremonies, holy days” to “a grave and serious demeanor; mirthless” was associative describing the behaviour expected of individuals attending such events.  Over time, the later sense became dissociated from the actual events and the original meaning became obsolete, surviving only in a handful of formal ecclesiastical calendars.  The word, without any reference to religious ceremonies meaning “marked by seriousness or earnestness” was common by the late fourteenth century, the sense of “fitted to inspire devout reflection” noted within decades.    Solemncholy is an adjective and no sources list the noun solemncholic or the adverb solemncholically as standard forms although, by implication, the need would seem to exist.  Emos presumably apply the adjectival comparative (more solemncholy) & superlative (most solemncholy) and perhaps too (during emo get-togethers) the plural forms solemncholics & solemncholies.

Melancholy was from the Middle English melancolie & malencolie (mental disorder characterized by sullenness, gloom, irritability, and propensity to causeless and violent anger), from the thirteenth century Old French melancolie (black bile; ill disposition, anger, annoyance), from the Late Latin melancholia, from the Ancient Greek μελαγχολία (melancholia) (atrabiliousness; sadness, (literally “excess of black bile”)), the construct being μέλας (mélas) or μελαν- (melan-) (black, dark, murky) + χολή (kholḗ) (bile).  It appeared in Latin as ātra bīlis (black bile) and was for centuries part of orthodox medical diagnosis and the adjectival use was a genuine invention of Middle English although whether the used of the –ly as a component of the suffix was an influence or a product isn’t known.  Pre-modern medicine attributed what would now be called “depression” to excess “black bile”, a secretion of the spleen and one of the body's four “humors” which needed to be “in balance” to ensure physical & mental well-being.  The adjectival use in Middle English to describe “sorrow, gloom” was most associated by unrequited love or doomed affairs but this is likely more the influence of poets than doctors.  As the medical profession’s belief in the four humors declined during the eighteenth century as understanding of human physiology improved, the word was in the mid-1800s picked up by the newly (almost) respectable branch of psychiatry where it remained a defined “condition” until well into the twentieth century.

The physicians from Antiquity attributed mental depression to unnatural or excess "black bile," a secretion of the spleen and one of the body's four "humors," which help form and nourish the body unless altered or present in excessive amounts. The word also was used in Middle English to mean "sorrow, gloom" (brought on by unrequited love, disappointment etc).  In antiquity it was a concept rather than something with a standardized systemization and there existed competing models with more or fewer components but it’s because the description with four was that endorsed by the Greek physician Hippocrates (circa 460–circa 370 BC) that it became famous in the West and absorbed into medical practice.  The four humors of Hippocratic medicine were (1) black bile (μέλαινα χολή (melaina chole)), (2) yellow bile (ξανθη χολή (xanthe chole)), (3) phlegm (φλέγμα (phlegma)) & (4) blood (αἷμα (haima)), each corresponding with the four temperaments of man and linked also to the four seasons: yellow Bile=summer, black bile=autumn, phlegm=winter & blood=spring.  Since antiquity, doctors and scholars wrote both theoretical and clinical works, the words melancholia and melancholy used interchangeably until the nineteenth century when the former came to refer to a pathological condition, the latter to a temperament.  Depression was derived from the Latin verb deprimere (to press down) and from the fourteenth century, "to depress" meant to subjugate or to bring down in spirits and by 1665 was applied to someone having "a great depression of spirit", Dr Johnson (Samuel Johnson, 1709-1784) using the word in a similar sense in 1753.  Later, the term came into use in physiology and economics.

What was for over two-thousand years known as melancholia came gradually to be called depression, a reclassification formalized in the mid-twentieth century when mental illness was subject to codification.  The first edition of the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM (1952)) included depressive reaction and the DSM-II (1968) added depressive neurosis, defined as an excessive reaction to internal conflict or an identifiable event, and also included a depressive type of manic-depressive psychosis within the category of Major Affective Disorders.  The term Major Depressive Disorder was introduced by a group of US clinicians in the mid-1970s and was incorporated into the DSM-III (1980).  Interestingly, the ancient idea of melancholia survives in modern medical literature in the notion of the melancholic subtype but, from the 1950s, the newly codified definitions of depression were widely accepted (although not without some dissent) and the nomenclature, with enhancements, continued in the DSM-IV (1994) and DSM-5 (2013)

According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the earliest known instance of solemncholy in text dates from 1772 in the writings of Philip Vickers Fithian (1747–1776), peripatetic tutor, missionary & lay-preacher of the Presbyterian denomination of Christianity, now best remembered for his extensive diaries and letters which continue to provide historians with source material relating to the pre-revolutionary north-eastern colonies which would later form the United States of America.  His observations on slavery and the appalling treatment of those of African origin working the plantations in Virginia remain a revealing counterpoint to the rationalizations and justifications (not infrequently on a theological or scriptural basis) offered by many other contemporary Christians.  Those dictionaries which include an entry for solemncholy often note it as one of the humorous constructions in English, based usually on words from other languages or an adaptation of a standard English form.  That’s certainly how it has come to be used but Fithian was a Presbyterian who aspired to the ministry, not a breed noted for jocularity and in his journal entries its clear he intended to word to mean only that he was pursuing serious matters, in 1773 writing: “Being very solemncholy and somewhat tired, I concluded to stay there all night.”

So it was an imaginative rather than a fanciful coining.  In contemporary culture, with mental health conditions increasingly fashionable, solemncholy (although still sometimes, if rarely, used in its original sense) found a new niche among those who wished to intellectualize their troubled state of mind and distinguish their affliction from mere depression which had become a bit common.  In a roundabout way, this meant it found a role too in humor, a joke about someone’s solemncholy still acceptable whereas to poke fun at their depression would be at least a micro-aggression:

Q: Victoria says she suffers from solemncholy.  Do you think that's a real condition?

A: Victoria is an emo; for her solemncholy is a calling.

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

The companion term to solemncholy is the sometimes acronym leucocholy (a state of feeling that accompanies preoccupation with trivial and insipid diversions).  The construct of leucocholy was leuco- + (melan)choly.  The leuco- prefix (which had appeared also as leuko-, leuc- & leuk-) was from the Proto-Hellenic λευκός (leukós) (white; colourless; leucocyte), from the primitive Indo-European lewk- (white; light; bright), the cognates including the Latin lūx, the Sanskrit रोचते (rocate), the Old Armenian լոյս (loys) and the Old English lēoht (light, noun) from which English gained “light”.  In the Ancient Greek, the word evolved to enjoy a range or meanings, just as in would happen English including (1) bright, shining, gleaming, (2) light in color; white, (3) pale-skinned, weakly, cowardly & (4) fair, happy, joyful.  Leucocholy is said to have been coined by the English poet and classical scholar Thomas Gray (1716–1771) whose oeuvre was highly regarded despite being wholly compiled into one slim volume and he’s remembered also for declining appointment as England’s Poet Laureate, thereby forgoing the both the tick of approval from the establishment and the annual cask of “strong wine” which came with the job.  What he meant by a “white melancholy” seems to have been a state of existence in which there may not be joy or enchantment but is pleasant: unfulfilling yet undemanding.  In such a state of mind, as he put it:  ca ne laisse que de s’amuser (which translates most elegantly as something like “all that is left for us is to have some fun”).

Martyr

Martyr (pronounced mahr-ter)

(1) A person who willingly suffers death rather than renounce their religious faith, most notably those saints canonized after martyrdom.

(2) A person who is put to death or endures great suffering on behalf of any belief, principle, or cause.

(3) A person who undergoes severe or constant suffering (often applied informally to those subject to chronic conditions such as rheumatism or migraine headaches).

(4) A person who seeks sympathy or attention by feigning or exaggerating pain, deprivation (fake martyrdom) or who willingly assumes some sort of easily avoidable (self-imposed martyrdom), both usually applied in a facetious or derogatory manner.

(5) To make a martyr of someone (especially by putting to death); to persecute, to torment or torture.

Pre 900: From the Middle English noun marter, from the Old English martir & martyr, from the Ecclesiastical Latin martyr, from the Doric Greek μάρτυρ (mártur (martus & mártyr)) (witness), a later form of the Ancient Greek μάρτυς (mártus (mártys & mártyros)) (witness).  The verb was from the Middle English martiren, from the Old English martyrian, from the noun.  The noun martyr referred to one who bears testimony to faith, especially one who willingly suffers death rather than deny their religious faith and specifically one of the Christians who put to death because they would not renounce their beliefs.  The verb developed in the sense of "put to death as punishment for adherence to some religious belief (especially Christianity) and was from the Middle English martiren, from Old French martiriier (and influenced by the Old English gemartyrian, from the noun martyr) and Middle English also had the mid-fifteenth century verb martyrize.  The general sense of "constant sufferer, a victim of misfortune, calamity, disease, etc" was in common use by the late sixteenth century while the Martyr complex (an exaggerated desire for self-sacrifice or assuming burdens) dates from 1916.  The noun martyrdom ("torture and execution for the sake of one's faith) emulated the use in the Old English and in the more abstract sense of "a state of suffering for the maintaining of any obnoxious cause", came to be used in the late fourteenth century.  The word has proved productive in its proliferation.  Martyr is a noun, martyrization, martyrdom, martyrology, martyry, martyrer, martyrship, martyrion, martyrium, martyrologe, martyrologue, protomartyr are nouns, martyring, martyrize & martyrizate are verbs, martyrish & martyresque are adjectives, martyred is a verb & adjective and martyrly is an adverb & adjective; the noun plural is martyrs.

Self-help for one's self.

The word was adopted directly into most Germanic languages (Old Saxon, Old Frisian Old High German et al), but fourteenth century Norse used the native formation pislarvattr (literally "torture-witness" meaning "one who suffers death or grievous loss in defense or on behalf of any belief or cause" (which could be personal, devotional or political).  Danish, French, Norwegian & Swedish all used the modern English spelling (some language groups in the old British Empire modified the spelling (notably under the Raj) while others picked it up unaltered).  Among other languages there was the Proto-Brythonic merθɨr, the Dutch martelaar, the Estonian märter, the Finnish marttyyri, the Old French martire, the Scots mairtyr, the Maori matira, the German Märtyrer, the Hungarian mártír, the Old Irish martar, the Old Italian martore, the Italian martire, the Lombard màrtul, the Neapolitan marture, the Catalan màrtir, the Occitan martir, the Galician, Spanish & Portuguese mártir, the Romanian martor, the Sardinian màrturu, the Sicilian màrtiri, the Scottish Gaelic martai and the Tagalog martir.  The origin of the Greek word is uncertain but may have been connected to mermera (care, trouble), from mermairein (be anxious or thoughtful), from the primitive Indo-European smrtu & mrtu-, source also of the Sanskrit smarati (remember) and the Latin memor (mindful).  Not all etymologists support the theory, usually because the phonetic relationships are dubious, suggesting a more likely origin lies in Archaic or Pre-Greek, perhaps even as a loan-word.  The Arabic شهيد (shaheed or shahid) (witness) in Islam refers to a martyr and appears often in the Quran (in the sense of "witness") but in only one instance can it be understood as  "martyr", the sense it acquired in the Ḥadīth, the vast body of work produced by authors which documented the words and thoughts attributed to the prophet.  The variations in the translations of these texts are legion and there has been cynical exploitation of this by the recruiters to jihadist causes who tend to seek out and merge the most punitive of the translations and the rewards to martyrs of 72 (the number varies) dark-eyed virgins appears with frequency.

Self-help for those with a difficult mother.

Martyrdom was of great interest to the Church, illustrated by the frequency with which martyrs to their faith were canonized (made into saints).  As a branch of theological academia, martyrology (history of the lives, sufferings, and deaths of Christian martyrs) became a district thing in the 1590s, either as a native formation from the noun martyr + -ology, or from the Ecclesiastical Latin martyrologium, from Ecclesiastical Greek martyrologicon.  The suffix -ology was formed from -o- (as an interconsonantal vowel) +‎ -logy.  The origin in English of the -logy suffix lies with loanwords from the Ancient Greek, usually via Latin and French, where the suffix (-λογία) is an integral part of the word loaned (eg astrology from astrologia) since the sixteenth century.  French picked up -logie from the Latin -logia, from the Ancient Greek -λογία (-logía).  Within Greek, the suffix is an -ία (-ía) abstract from λόγος (lógos) (account, explanation, narrative), and that a verbal noun from λέγω (légō) (I say, speak, converse, tell a story).  In English the suffix became extraordinarily productive, used notably to form names of sciences or disciplines of study, analogous to the names traditionally borrowed from the Latin (eg astrology from astrologia; geology from geologia) and by the late eighteenth century, the practice (despite the disapproval of the pedants) extended to terms with no connection to Greek or Latin such as those building on French or German bases (eg insectology (1766) after the French insectologie; terminology (1801) after the German Terminologie).  Within a few decades of the intrusion of modern languages, combinations emerged using English terms (eg undergroundology (1820); hatology (1837)).  In this evolution, the development may be though similar to the latter-day proliferation of “-isms” (fascism; feminism et al).  In the Roman Catholic Church (an institution long given to making lists of stuff), an important part of martyrology was the index (or calendar) of martyrs, arranged according to their anniversaries (ie of their martyrdom).  In Middle English there was the late fourteenth century martiloge (the register of martyred saints), from the Medieval Latin martilogium; the related coining was martyrological.

Self-help for those with a difficult boyfriend.

Except where it’s unavoidable, the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) which publishes the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), tends not to use popular forms like “martyr complex”, bundling the condition in the category of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), a cluster B personality disorder considered to be one of the least identified of the class, noting NPD frequently coexists with other psychiatric disorders.  A relatively recent diagnostic category, its development reflected not a distinct set of diagnostic criteria but rather the recognition by clinicians (psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists) that to classify certain difficult (though typically not neurotic) patients as psychotic was counter-productive.  The most often noted characteristics of NPD include grandiosity, the excessive quest admiration and a lack of empathy, coupled with underlying feelings of low self esteem issues and inadequacy.  In the DSM-5-TR (2022), the symptoms of NPD are listed as:

(1) A grandiose logic of self-importance.

(2) A fixation with fantasies of infinite success, control, brilliance, beauty, or idyllic love.

(3) A credence that he or she is extraordinary and exceptional and can only be understood by, or should connect with, other extraordinary or important people or institutions.

(4) A desire for unwarranted admiration.

(5) A sense of entitlement.

(6) Interpersonally oppressive behavior.

(7) No form of empathy.

(8) Resentment of others or a conviction that others are resentful of him or her.

(9) A display of egotistical and conceited behaviors or attitudes.

The early Church celebrated particularly the example of Justin Martyr (circa 100-circa 165, who appears in some texts as Justin the Philosopher).  His name wasn’t actually Martyr but it was adopted because his conduct in the face of suffering was thought exemplary.  He was in all probability a pagan and had sought education from schools in the Peripatetic, Pythagorean and Platonic traditions but was still unsatisfied unit falling into conversation with an elderly man he met on a beach who “…convinced him of the truth as it is in Jesus”.  His conversion to Christianity led to a lifetime of teaching, writing his apologia which culminated with his martyrdom, beheaded with six others under the reign of Marcus Aurelius (121–180; Roman emperor 161-180) although there’s nothing to suggest the emperor was involved in the sentencing.  For his faith he was of course rewarded with eternal life in Heaven but Justin too achieved a kind of earthly immortality, venerated as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern & Oriental Orthodox Churches and in the Anglican community.  Later, the legend arose that Marcus Aurelius became disposed to relax the persecution of Christians after a group of them prayed for rain and the subsequent storm was of such intensity it enabled him to avoid military defeat although, off and on, persecution continued and it wasn’t until the reign of Constantine the Great (circa 272-337; Roman emperor 306–337) began to emerge as the dominant religion of the empire.

The persecution of Christians will seem familiar to minorities living under many authoritarian regimes including the Falun Gong in China and the Baháʼí in Iran and many historians have concluded the reasons tend to be political rather than theological, structuralists summarizing things thus:

(1) Emperors in Rome were much opposed to gods their regime did not recognize, the Bible noting (1 Corinthians 8:5) “there be gods many, and lords many” but the imperial authorities did not own the God of the Christians.

(2) The Christian faith preached One who was God over all the earth, who knew no political frontiers and that pagan gods were mere idols.

(3) Christians could not join in pagan worship or the idolatrous acts which were part of the social or civic occasions of which the state approved. 

(4) Christians met as a secret society and were unsociable in their behavior, the assumption being they might be plotting against the state.

(5) Christians were seen to be threatening the financial and political interests of various powerful classes, priests, the makers & sellers of idols and those who bred and sole sacrificial animals.

(6) Christians and their ways were accused to be arousing the anger of Roman gods who proved vengeful in visiting upon the empire famines, earthquakes, military defeats and other punishments.

Foxe's Book of Martyrs (1653, the full title Actes and Monuments of these Latter and Perillous Days, Touching Matters of the Church) by John Foxe (1517-1587) was a review of the history of martyrdom in European Christianity with a particular focus on the suffering of the early English Protestants.

The persecution continued until the year 311 when the Emperor Galerius (circa 258–311; Roman emperor 305-311) expired, meeting his death in a manner similar to that recorded in Acts (12:3) as that suffered by Herod Agrippa: “He was eaten of worms and gave up the ghost”.  Baffled yet convinced by grace with which Christians accepted their martyrdom, on his deathbed Galerius issued the Edict of Toleration and entreated Christians to pray on his behalf.

Stationary & Stationery

Stationery (pronounced stey-shuh-ner-ee)

(1) Writing paper.

(2) Writing materials, as pens, pencils, paper, and envelopes.

(3) Any office related hardware (staplers, pencil sharpeners et al) or consumables (staples etc), a use technically incorrect by historic standards but widely used and understood in commerce. 

1727: From the Medieval Latin statiōnārius (station), used to describe a bookseller who had a fixed station (especially at universities) as distinct from the then more prevalent form of commerce which was peripatetic.  The construct of stationery was not station + ery but stationer (one who sell paper, pens, books etc from a fixed location) + -y.  Stationery is a noun & adjective & stationer is a noun; the noun plural is stationeries but stationers is more commonly used.

Reader's Digest Kids Letter Writer Book & Stationary Set, one of Lindsay Lohan’s early (in 1994, then aged seven) modelling jobs.    The original form (circa 1675) was "stationery wares", describing the books, pens, ink and such sold by a "stationer" who was someone with "a station" (as opposed to the them common itinerant vendor)) and, over time, popular usage saw stationery gain and retain its modern association.  So there's a reason why two words with slightly different spellings share the same pronunciation yet have meanings which at first glance appear to be unrelated.  Such linguistic quirks are not unique to English but the language does seem to have many which, even when explained, must seen strange to those learning the tongue.

The suffixes –ary, -ery and –y

The suffix –ary was a back-formation from unary and similar, from the Latin adjective suffixes -aris and –arius.  It created the adjectival sense “of or pertaining to” when applied to various words, often nouns, and was used most frequently with words of Latin origin but it’s long been more broadly applied.  In mathematics, it’s used to refer to results having the specified -arity (the maximum number of child nodes that any node in a given tree (data structure) may have).-ate

The suffix -ery was from the Middle English -erie, from the Anglo-Norman and Old French -erie, which is inherited from the Latin -arius and Latin –ator (a suffix forming abstract nouns).  The suffix first appeared  in loan words from the Old French into Middle English, but became productive within English by the sixteenth century, in some instances properly a combination of -er with -y as in stationery, bakery & brewery, but also as a single suffix in words like slavery & machinery.  Added to nouns, it could form other nouns meaning "art, craft, or practice of"; added to verbs it could form nouns meaning "place of an art, craft, or practice”; added to nouns it could form other nouns meaning "a class, group, or collection of"; added to nouns it could form other nouns meaning "behaviour characteristic of."

The suffix -y was from the Middle English –y & -i, from the Old English -iġ (the –y & -ic suffixes), from the Proto-Germanic -īgaz (-y, -ic), from the primitive Indo-European -kos, -ikos, & -iḱos (-y, -ic).  It was cognate with the Scots -ie (-y), the West Frisian -ich (-y), the Dutch -ig (-y), the Low German -ig (-y), the German -ig (-y), the Swedish -ig (-y), the Latin -icus (-y, -ic) and the Ancient Greek -ικός (-ikós); doublet of -ic.  It was added to nouns and adjectives to form adjectives meaning “having the quality of” and to verbs to form adjectives meaning "inclined to”; “tending towards".  The suffix remains productive in English and can be added to just about any word.  If the result is something perceived not to be a real word, a hyphen should be used to indicate it’s a deliberate attempt to convey a meaning rather than a spelling mistake.  A few long-established words ending with this suffix have distinctive spellings, such as wintry and fiery, which are often misspelled as wintery and firey although these mistakes are now so frequent that they’re likely to gain acceptance and there are special cases: "firey" is now widely used in slang as a noun to describe fire fighters.

Stationary (pronounced stey-shuh-ner-ee)

(1) Standing still; not moving.

(2) Having a fixed position; not movable.

(3) Established in one place; not itinerant or migratory.

(4) Remaining in the same condition or state; not changing.

1400–1450: From the late Middle English from the Latin word statiōnārius (surface analysis station) from statiō (a standing, post, job, position) ultimately from stō (to stand). Stō was a word-forming element used in making names of devices for stabilizing or regulating (eg thermostat), from the Ancient Greek statos (standing, stationary) from the primitive Indo-European ste-to-, a suffixed form of root sta- (to stand, make or be firm)  It was first used in heliostat (an instrument for causing the sun to appear stationary (1742)).  The late fourteenth century sense of "having no apparent motion" was in reference to planets and was derived from the Middle French stationnaire (motionless) also from the Latin statiōnārius; the meaning "unmovable" is from 1620s.  Not unusually, the meanings in later English and European languages evolved beyond the original; in Classical Latin, statiōnārius is recorded only in the sense "of a military station, the word for "stationary, steady" being statarius.  Stationary is a noun & adjective, stationariness is a noun and stationarily is an adverb; the noun plural is stationaries.  The most common appearance of stationary as a noun is probably as a misspelling stationary but it can be use (1) as a clipping of the description of a static version of something (stationary engine et al) or (2) of any person or object which is not moving (usually in the context of a contrast with surrounding people or objects which are moving) and (3) in historic astronomy, a planet or other heavenly body which apparently has neither progressive nor retrograde motion (now obsolete).  In the aerospace community, it may be that "geostationary" (of satellites) are sometimes casually referred to as "stationaries") but it seems not documented.

Stationary Engines

Engineers insist a “stationary engine” is one bolted or cemented in place, to remain there until (1) it blows up, (2) it’s scrapped or (3) it’s uprooted and moved to a new location where it can again function.  Stationary engines provided much of the horsepower (a calculation devised to define engine power) for the first industrial revolution in the eighteenth century, used to drive anything from generators & pumps to cranks moving parts of machines.  The classic example were the big reciprocating devices (steam or internal combustion) whereas the large scale electric plants or turbines tended (once reaching a certain size) to be classified as “plant”.  The development of the infrastructure to distribute electricity from regional hubs meant the used of stationary engines declined but they remain widely used and are a common sight in rural areas where they both pump water from a variety of sources and distribute it to irrigation systems.  There are also engines which technically are portable (some small enough to be carried by hand while others are mounted on trailers, trucks or even boats) but which often function as stationary devices and engineers regards such things always as “portable”, even if stationary for years.

A Chrysler Air Raid Siren being delivered (1953, left) and permanently installed (1960, right), atop the Rob Storms Rochester Fire Department maintenance building, Rochester, Monroe County, New York.  This was a stationary engine even while on the truck which it remained after being taken up to the roof and bolted down.  Had it remained on the truck (even if bolted to the chassis) and been driven from place to be run, it would have been classified a “portable engine”.

According to Guinness World Records, the loudest sirens ever were the 350-odd built by Chrysler for the US government in the early 1950s and installed around the country to warn of an impending nuclear attack by the Soviet Union.  The maximum volume the devices generated was recorded (at a distance of 100 feet (30.5 m)) as 138 decibels (dB), a level which meant a human would be deafened if within 200 feet (61 m) during their operation.  Guinness noted the compressor discharge throughput at peak volume was 74 m³ (2,610 cubic feet at 7 lb per square inch) of air per second and the physics of fluid dynamics (air a fluid in this context) was such that this would have caused a sheet of paper in the path spontaneously to ignite.  By comparison the now retired supersonic airline Concorde at take-off produced noise levels between 112-114 dB at a distance of 100 feet and even the after-burner equipped military jets (F-16, F-35 et al) haven’t been recorded as generating levels as high as 138 dB.  Although there were ebbs in the tensions, the “High Cold War” is regarded as the time between the early 1950s and mid 1960s, the public perception of which was dominated by the fear of nuclear war. The US government made many preparations for such an event, notably building vast underground facilities where essential personnel (members of the administration, the Congress and their families and servants) could live until it was safe to emerge into the post- apocalypse world).  The tax-payers who paid for these facilities were of course rather less protected but the government in 1952 did install warning sirens in cities; people might still be vaporized by comrade Stalin’s (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) H-Bombs but they would know it was coming so there was that.

The early version was co-developed by Chrysler and Bell Labs and named the Chrysler Bell Victory Siren which sounds optimistic but although the acoustic properties met the specification, the drawback was the devices were manually controlled and required someone physically to be there to start the thing and, being directional, rotate it so the sound would be broadcast 360^o.  The obvious flaw was that were there to be a nuclear attack in the area, the job-description was self-sacrificial, something comrade Stalin would doubtless have thought just the part of the cost of war with the unfortunate soul posthumously to be awarded the coveted Герой Советского Союза (Hero of the Soviet Union) decoration.  However, neither the White House or the Pentagon liked the optics of that and revised specifications were issued.  Chrysler responded with a more elaborate device which was automated and remotely administrated, the Chrysler Air Raid Siren introduced in 1952.  It was powered by the corporation’s new 331 cubic inch (5.4 litre) Hemi-head V8, rated at what was then a stellar 180 HP (134 kW), a three-stage compressor added to increase output.  Instead of demanding a potentially doomed operator, there was a control panel connected (with nothing more than the two-pair copper cables which became familiar as Cat3) to dedicated phone lines so it could be activated either by local civil defense authorities or the military.  The big V8 provided sufficient power to both increase the dB and the geographical coverage, the siren able to be heard over an area of some 15.8 square miles (41 km³), an impressive number given the electric sirens used today for tornado and tsunami warnings have an effective footprint of only some 3.9 square miles (10 km³).

Chrysler FirePower 392 cubic inch V8 in 1957 Chrysler 300C Convertible.

In 1952, there was no engine better suited to the task than Chrysler’s new “FirePower” V8.  Applying their wartime experience building a number of high-output, multi-cylinder engines (the most remarkable a V16 aero-engine rendered obsolete by jet technology before it could be used), the FirePower featured hemispherical combustion chambers and was the corporation’s first use of overhead-valves.  Both designs had been around for decades but in time, Chrysler would make a (trade-marked) fetish of “Hemi”, continuing cheerfully to use the name for a range of V8s introduced in 2003 even though they were no longer a true hemi-head, the design unable to be adapted to meet modern exhaust emission laws.  The so-called “third generation” Hemi remains available still although how long it will last will be a matter of the interplay of politics and demand.  Doubtless, it was Greta Thunberg’s (b 2003) hit-list and that she and the engine debuted in the same year would have impressed her not at all.  

Proscenium

Proscenium (pronounced proh-see-nee-uhm or pruh-see-nee-uhm)

(1) In a modern theatre, the stage area between the curtain and the orchestra or the arch that separates a stage from the auditorium together with the area immediately in front of the arch (also called the proscenium arch).

(2) In the theatre of antiquity, the stage area immediately in front of the scene building (probably a medieval misunderstanding).

(3) In the theatre of antiquity, the row of columns at the front the scene building, at first directly behind the circular orchestra but later upon a stage.

1608: From the Latin proscēnium and proscaenium (in front of the scenery) from the Ancient Greek προσκήνιον (proskḗnion), (entrance to a tent, porch, stage) which, in late Classical Greek had come to mean “stent; boothtage curtain”.  The construct in Greek was πρό (pró-) (before) + σκηνή (skēnḗ) (scene; building) + --ion (the neuter noun suffix).  The noun plural is proscenia, the relative rarity of the base word meaning prosceniums is seen less frequently still but both are acceptable.  The standard abbreviation in the industry and among architects is pros.  For purists, the alternative spelling is proscænium and other European forms include the French proscénium and the Italian proscenio, other languages borrowing these spellings.

The occasionally cited literal translation of the Greek "the space in front of the scenery" appears to be another of the medieval-era errors created by either a mistranslation or a misunderstanding.  The modern sense of "space between the curtain and the orchestra" is attested from 1807 although it had been used figurative to suggest “foreground or front” since the 1640s.

Architectural variations

Emerson Colonial Theatre, Boston, Massachusetts.

Although the term is not always applied correctly, technically, a proscenium stage must have an architectural frame (known to architects as the “proscenium arch” although these are not always in the shape of an arch).  Their stages tend to be deep (the scale of the arch usually dictating the extent) and to aid visibility, are sometimes raked, the surface rising in a gentle slope away from the audience.  Especially in more recent constructions, the front of the stage can extend beyond the proscenium into the auditorium; this called an apron or forestage.  Theatres with proscenium stages are known as “proscenium arch theatres” and often include an orchestra pit and a fly tower with one or more catwalks to facilitate the movement of scenery and the lighting apparatus.

Thrust stage, Shakespeare Festival Theatre, Stratford, Ontario.

There are other architectural designs for theatres.  The thrust stage projects (ie “thrusts”) the performance into the auditorium with the audience sitting on three sides in what’s called the “U” shape.  In diagrams and conceptual sketches, the thrust stage area is often represented as a square but they’ve been built in rectangles, as semi-circles, half-polygons, multi-pointed stars and a variety of other geometric shapes.  Architects can tailor a thrust stage to suit the dimensions of the available space but the usual rationale is to create an intimacy between actors and audience.

In the round: Circle in the Square Theatre, New York City.

The term theatre-in-the-round can be misleading because the arrangement of the performance areas, while central, is rarely executed as an actual circle, the reference instead being to the audience being seated “all around”.  Built typically in a square or polygonal formation, except in some one-act performances, the actors enter through aisles or vomitories between the seating and directors have them move as necessitated by the need to relate to an audience viewing from anywhere in the 360^o sweep, the scenery minimal and positioned avoid obstructions.  Because theatre-in-the-round inherently deconstructs the inherently two-dimensional nature of the classical stage, it was long a favorite of the avant-garde (there was a time when such a thing could be said to exist).  The arena theatre is theatre-in-the-round writ large, big auditoria with a central stage and like the sports stadia they resemble, typically rectangular and often a multi-purpose venue.  There’s a fine distinction between arena theatres and hippodromes which more recall circuses with a central circular (or oval) performance space surrounded by concentric tiered seating with deep pits or low screens often separating audience and performers.

Winter Talent Show stage, Mean Girls (2004).

The black-box (or studio or ad hoc) theatre is a flexible performance space.  At its most basic it can be a single empty room, painted black, the floor of the stage the same level as the first audience row from which there’s no separation.  To maximize the flexibility, some black-box theatres have no permanent fixtures and allow for the temporary setup of seating to suit the dynamics of the piece and the spaces have even been configured with no seating for an audience, the positional choices made by patrons influencing the performance.  The platform stage is the simplest setup, often not permanent and suited to multi-purpose venues.  Flexible thus but the lack of structure does tend to preclude more elaborate productions with the stage a raised and usually rectangular platform at one end of a room; the platform may be level or raked according to the size and shape of the space.  The will audience sit in rows and such is the simplicity that platform stages are often used without curtains, the industry term being “open stage or “end stage”, the latter perhaps unfortunate but then actors are used to “break a leg” and “died on stage”.

Open Air Theatre Festival, Paris.

The phrase open air theatre refers more to the performance than the physical setting.  It means simply something performed not under a roof (although sometimes parts of the stage or audience seating will be covered).  The attraction for a director is that stages so exposed can make use of natural light as it changes with the hour sunsets and stars especially offering dramatic possibilities; rain can be a problem.  Open air theatres are also an example of site-specific theatre (of which street theatre is probably best-known), a term with quite a bit of overlap with other descriptors although it’s applied usually to theatre is performed in a non-traditional environments such as a pubs, old prisons or warehouse, often reflecting the history of the place.  Promenade theatre (sometimes called peripatetic theatre) involves either the actors or the audience moving from place to place as the performance dictates.  Interactive theatre is rarely performed (at least by intent); it involves the actors interacting with the audience and is supposed to be substantially un-scripted but, like reality television, some of what’s presented as interactive theatre has been essentially fake.

Borrowed from antiquity, the proscenium arch theatre was for centuries a part of what defined the classical tradition of Western dramatic art but in the twentieth century playwrights and directors came to argue that modern audiences were longing for more intimate experiences although there’s scant evidence this view was the product of demand rather than supply.  That said, the novelty of immersive, site-specific performances gained much popularity and modern production techniques stimulated a revival of interest in older forms like theatre-in-the-round.

There were playwrights and directors however (some at whatever age self-styled enfants terribles), who preferred austerity, decrying the proscenium arch as a theatre based on a lavish illusion for which we either no longer had the taste or needed to have it beaten out of us.  It was thought to embody petit bourgeois social and cultural behaviors which normalized not only the style and content of theatre but also the rules of how theatre was to be watched: sitting quietly while well dressed, deferentially laughing or applauding at the right moments.  A interesting observation also was that the proscenium arch created a passive experience little different from television, a critique taken up more recently by those who thought long performances, typically with no more than one intermission (now dismissed as anyway existing only to serve wine and cheese) unsuitable for audiences with short attention spans and accustomed to interactivity.

Quite how true any of that was except in the minds of those who thought social realist theatre should be compulsory re-education for all is a mystery but the binge generation seems able easily to sustain their attention for epic-length sessions of the most lavishly illusionary stuff which can fit on a screen so there’s that.  The criticisms of the proscenium arch were more a condemnation of those who were thought its devoted adherents than any indication the form was unsuitable for anything but the most traditional delivery of drama.  Neither threatening other platforms nor rendered redundant by them, the style of theatre Plato metaphorically called “the cave” will continue, as it long has, peacefully to co-exist.