Serendipity

Serendipity (pronounced ser-uhn-dip-i-tee)

(1) The faculty of making fortunate discoveries by accident; a combination of events which have come together by chance to make a surprisingly good or wonderful outcome.

(2) Luck, good fortune.

(3) As the serendipity berry (Dioscoreophyllum volkensii), a tropical dioecious rainforest vine in the family Menispermaceae, native to tropical Africa from Sierra Leone east to Eritrea, and south to Angola and Mozambique.

1754: The construct was Serendip + -ity.  The proper noun Serendip (Serendib the alternative form) was an archaic name for the island of Ceylon (सिंहल (siṃhala (Sri Lanka”) after 1972 from द्वीप (dvīpa) (island)), from the Arabic سَرَنْدِيب‎ (sarandīb), from the Persian سرندیپ‎ (sarandip), from the Prakrit sīhaladīva & Sanskrit सिंहलद्वीप (siṃhaladvīpa (literally “island of the Sinhala people”)).  The –ity suffix was from the French -ité, from the Middle French -ité, from the Old French –ete & -eteit (-ity), from the Latin -itātem, from -itās, from the primitive Indo-European suffix –it.  It was cognate with the Gothic –iþa (-th), the Old High German -ida (-th) and the Old English -þo, -þu & -þ (-th).  It was used to form nouns from adjectives (especially abstract nouns), thus most often associated with nouns referring to the state, property, or quality of conforming to the adjective's description.

Serendipity berries, one of the “miracle berries”.

The serendipity berry is noted as a source of monellin, an intensely sweet protein and if chewed, alters the perception of taste to make tart, acidic or bitter food taste sweet.  Pills containing synthesized monellin are sold as “miracle fruit tablets” for this purpose (a lemon eaten after sucking on one of these tablets quite a revelation) and as “miracle fruit”, serendipity and related berries are widely used in African folk medicine although there’s scant evidence for their efficacy as a treatment for the many diseases they’re said to cure.  Words with a similar meaning include fluke, happenstance, blessing, break and luck but serendipity carries the particular sense of something very useful and wholly unexpected being the result while The phrases “Murphy's law” & “perfect storm” are close to being antonyms.  In science and industry, serendipity has played a part in the discovery or development of vaccination, insulin to treat diabetes, penicillin, quinine, Viagra, x-rays, radioactivity, pulsars, cosmic microwave background radiation, Teflon, vulcanized rubber, microwave ovens, Velcro and 3M's (originally Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing) post-it notes (though it seems its part in the invention of stainless steel may be a myth).  Serendipity & serendipitist are nouns, serendipitously is an adverb and serendipitous is an adjective; the noun plural is serendipities.  Serendipiter & serendipper are non-standard noun forms adopted in popular culture.

Serendipity was in 1754 coined by the English Whig politician & author writer Horace Walpole (1717–1797), derived from the fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip, the three, Walpole noted, “always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of”.  The Three Princes of Serendip was an English version of Peregrinaggio di tre giovani figliuoli del re di Serendippo, printed in 1557 by Venetian publisher Michele Tramezzino (1526-1571), the text said to have been the work of a Cristoforo Armeno who had translated the Persian fairy tale into Italian, adapting Book One of Amir Khusrau's Hasht-Bihisht (1302). The story was translated into French before the first English edition was published and Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet, 1694–1778) used the tale in his 1797 novella Zadig ou la Destinée (Zadig or The Book of Fate), an intriguing fusion of fiction and philosophy which influenced systematic science, the evolution of creative writing about crime and even horror stories.

Portrait of Horace Walpole (1728), aged ten by William Hogarth (1697-1784) in gilt frame, Strawberry Hill House, Twickenham.  He was the youngest son of Sir Robert Walpole (1676-1745), the Whig politician who between 1721-1742 served as first lord of the Treasury, chancellor of the exchequer and leader of the House of Commons; by virtue of this, he came to be recognized as Britain's first prime-minister.

Walpole used serendipity first in a letter (dated 28 January 1754) he wrote to Florence-based British diplomat Sir Horace Mann (1706–1786) but which seems not to have been published until 1833, the new word remaining almost unnoticed until the 1870s when there was a brief spike; it was in the early-mid twentieth century it became popular and until then it was rare to find a dictionary entry although the adjective serendipitous appeared as early as 1914.  Walpole was compelled to coin serendipity to illustrate his delighted surprise at finding a detail in a painting of Bianca Cappello (1548–1587 and latterly of the clan Medici) by Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574).  The charm of the word is such that it’s been borrowed, unaltered, by many languages and it frequently appears in "favorite word" or "words of the year" lists.

Portrait of Bianca Cappello, Second Wife of Francesco I de' Medici (circa 1580), fresco by Alessandro Allori (1535-1607), Galleria degli Uffizi, Firenze.

The twenty-two-year-old Walpole fell under the charm of the long dead Bianca Cappello while staying in Florence during his grand tour of the continent.  Besotted by the portrait of the peach-skinned Venetian beauty which hung in the Casa Vitelli, it's not clear what immediately drew his eye but a diary note by the French writer Montaigne (1533–1592), who in 1580 had the pleasure of meeting her, might provide a hint: “...belle à l’opinion italienne, un visage agréable et imperieux, le corsage gros, et de tetins à leur fouhait” ("...according to the Italians she is beautiful.  She has an agreeable and imposing face, and large breasts, the way they like them here…").  He confided his passion to Mann who around 1753 purchased the work, sending it to his friend who had by then returned to England, his cover letter including the revelatory “It is an old acquaintance of yours, and once much admired by you... it is the portrait you so often went to see in Casa Vitelli of Bianca Capello… to which, as your proxy, I have made love to for a long while… It has hung in my bedchamber and reproached me indeed of infidelity, in depriving you of what I originally designed for you”.  These days, such things are called objectum sexuality or fictosexualism but in the eighteenth century it was just something the English aristocracy did.

Lindsay Lohan in polka-dots, enjoying a frozen hot chocolate, Serendipity 3 restaurant, New York, 7 January 2019.

Whatever other pleasures the oil on canvas bought him, Walpole must also have devoted some attention to detail for he would soon write back to Mann: “I must tell you a critical discovery of mine a propos in a book of Venetian arms.  There are two coats of Capello… on one of them is added a fleu de luce on a blue ball, which I am persuaded was given to the family by the Grand Duke” (of Medici who was Bianca's second husband (who may have murdered the first)).  Much pleased at having stumbled upon this link between the two families in a book of Venetian heraldry he happened at the time to be reading in the search for suitable emblems with which to adorn the painting's frame, he told his dear friend: “This discovery indeed is almost of that kind which I call SERENDIPITY”.

Croissant

Croissant (pronounced krwah-sahn (French) or kruh-sahnt (barbarians))

A rich, buttery, often crescent-shaped, roll of leavened dough or puff paste.

1899:  From the French croissant (crescent), present participle of the verb croître (to increase, to grow), from the Middle French croistre, from the Old French creistre derived from the Classical Latin crēscēns & crēscentem, present active infinitive of crēscō (I augment), drawn from the Proto-Italic krēskō. The ultimate root was the primitive Indo-European ḱreh (to grow, become bigger).  Correct pronunciation here.  

The Austrian Pastry

Like some other cultural artefacts thought quintessentially French (French fries invented in Belgium; Nicolas Sarkozy (b 1955; French president 2007-2012) from here and there; the Citroën DS (1955-1975) styled by an Italian) the croissant came from elsewhere, its origins Austrian, the Viennese kipferl a crescent-shaped sweet made plain, with nuts or other fillings.  It varies from the French classic in being denser and less flaky, made with softer dough.  First noted in the thirteenth century at which time, it was thought a “sweet” it was another three-hundred years before it came to be regarded as a morning pastry.  Tastes changed as new techniques of baking evolved and around the turn of the seventeenth century, recipes began to appear in Le Pâtissier François using Pâte feuilletée (puff pastry), these being the first recognisably modern croissants.

Culinary histories include a number of (likely apocryphal) tales of why the croissant adopted a crescent shape.  One suggests it was baked first in Buda to celebrate the defeat of the Ummayyad (the Umayyad Caliphate (661–750) was the second of the four major caliphates created after the death of the prophet Muhammad (circa 570-632)) forces by the Franks in the Battle of Tours (732), the shape representing the Islamic crescent moon although more famous is the notion it was designed after the battle of 1683 when the Ottomans were turned back from the gates of Vienna.  A baker, said to have heard the Turks tunneling under the walls of the city as he lit his ovens to bake the morning bread, sounded an alarm, and the defending forces collapsed the tunnel, saving the city.   To celebrate, bread was baked in the shape of the crescent moon of the Turkish flag.

Portrait of Marie Antoinette (1769) oil on canvas by Joseph Ducreux (1735-1802).

The official title of the portrait was Archduchess Maria Antonia of Austria and it was created as the era’s equivalent of a Tinder profile picture, the artist summoned in 1769 to Vienna to paint a pleasing rendering of the young lady the Hapsburg royal court planned to marry off to Louis, Dauphin of France (1754-1973) who would reign as Louis XVI (King of France 1774-1792)).  Tinder profile pictures can be misleading (some pounds and even more years sometimes vanishing) so the work must be considered in that context although she was barely fourteen when she sat so it may be true to the subject.  Ducreux’s portrait was the first glimpse the prince had of his intended bride and it must have been pleasing enough for him metaphorically to "swipe right" and the marriage lasted until the pair were executed with the blade of the guillotine.  As a reward, Ducreux was raised to the nobility as a seigneur de la baronnie (lord of the barony, the grade of of baron granted to roturiers (commoners)) and appointed premier peintre de la reine (First Painter to the Queen), outliving the royal couple.

A more romantic tale attributes the pastry to Marie Antoinette (1755–1793; Queen of France 1774-1792), who, as an Austrian, preferred the food of her homeland to that of the French court and, at state dinners, would sneak away to enjoy pastries and coffee.  There is no documentary evidence for her having re-christened the kipferl as the croissant but the story is she so missed what she knew as kipfel (German for crescent) that she commanded the royal baker to clone the treat.  More prosaic, but actually verified by historical evidence, is that August Zang (1807-1888), a retired Austrian artillery officer founded a Viennese Bakery in Paris in 1839 and most food historians agree he is the one most likely to have introduced the kipfel to France, a pastry that later inspired French bakers to create crescents of their own.  The first mention of the croissant in French is in French chemist Anselme Payen’s (1795-1871) Des Substances alimentaires (1853), published long after Marie-Antoinette’s time in court, the first known printed recipe, using the name, appearing in Swiss chef Joseph Favre’s (1849-1903) Dictionnaire universel de cuisine (1905) although even that was a more dense creation than the puffy thing known today.

Breakfast in Paris.

Although the famous shape is much admired, for purists, the choice is always the un-curved croissant au beurre, (butter croissant), the more eye-catching crescents being usually the ordinaires, made with margarine.  The taste in the English-speaking world for things like ham-and-cheese croissants is regarded by the French as proof of Anglo-Saxon barbarism although they will tolerate a sparse drizzle of chocolate if it’s for children and food critics reluctantly concede the almond croissant (with a frangipane filling, topped with slivered almonds and a dusting of powdered sugar) is “…enjoyed by younger women”.  Generally though, the French stick to the classics, eschewing even butter, a croissant being best enjoyed unadorned and taken with a strong black coffee and while some will insist this should be accompanied with a Gitanes, that is optional.

The cube croissant, an Instagram favorite.

Although much focused upon, the shape of a croissant of course becomes less relevant when eaten when the experience becomes one of taste and texture.  For that reason the pastry used has long attracted those chefs for whom food offers architectural possibilities and while for more than a century one-offs have been created for competition and special event, in recent years the phenomenon of social media has been a design stimulant, Instagram, TikTok et al fuelling a culinary arms race and patisseries have built (sometimes short-lived) product lines in response to viral videos.  Fillings have of course been a feature but it’s the shapes which have been most eye-catching (and by extension click-catching which is the point for the content providers). There have been “croissants” in the shape of spheres, discs, pyramids, spirals, wedges and cubes, the last among the more amusing with chefs referencing objects and concepts such as dice, cubist art and, of course, the Rubik’s Cube.  Many have been just a moment while some have for a while trended.

Dominique Ansel's Cronut, stacked and sliced.

Some have endured for longer such as the Cronut (the portmanteau’s construct being cro(issant) + (dough)nut) and so serious was New York based French pastry chef Dominique Ansel (b 1978) that in 2013 he trademarked his creation.  In the familiar shape of a doughnut, the composition was described as “a croissant-like pastry with a filling of flavored cream and fried in grapeseed oil.”  Interviewed by Murdoch tabloid the New York Post, the chef revealed it took “two months of R&D (research & development)” before the Cronut was perfected and the effort was clearly worthwhile because after being released in his eponymous bakery in Manhattan’s SoHo neighbourhood, the city’s food bloggers (a numerous and competitive population) responded and within days photographs circulated of dozens waiting for opening time, a reaction which prompted the application to the US Patent and Trademark Office.  In the way of such things, around the planet “clones”, “tributes”, “knock-offs”, “imitations”, “rip-offs” (the descriptions as varied as the slight changes in the recipes introduced presumably to fend off a C&D (cease and desist letter)) soon appeared.  Predictably, some were called “Doughssants” (the Germanic eszett a nice touch) although others were less derivative.

New York Post, August 16 2022.

Monsieur Ansel in 2015 released Dominique Ansel: The Secret Recipes, a cookbook which included the Cronut recipe and the thing in its authentic form was clearly for the obsessives, the instructions noting making one or a batch was a three-day process.  In its review of the year, Time magazine nominated the Cronut as one of the “best inventions of 2013”, prompting one cultural commentator (another species which proliferates in New York City) to observe the decadence of the West had reached the point the breakdown of society was close.  There may have been something in the idea the new “Visigoths at the Gates of Rome” were actually pastry chefs because in the wake of the Cronut the city was soon flooded with all sorts of novel sugary treats, mostly elaborations of croissants, doughnuts and, it being NYC, bagels.  By 2022 the New York Post was prepared to proclaim: “Move over cronuts! NYC's hot new baked good is the Suprême”, the defenestrator from Noho’s Lafayette Grand Café and revealed to be a “unique circular croissant filled with pastry crème and topped with ganache and crushed up cookies.”  Again of the Instagram & TikTok age, queues were reported even though at a unit cost of US$8.50 it was two dollars more expensive than a Cronut, the price of which had increased fairly modestly since 2013 when it debuted at US$5.00.

All the recent variations on the croissant are built on the theme chefs have for centuries understood is the easy path to popularity: FSS; add fat, salt & sugar, the substances mankind has for millennia sought.  Once it took much effort (and often some risk) to find these things but now they’re conveniently packaged and widely available at prices which, although subject to political and economic forces, remain by historic standards very cheap.  Often, we don’t even need to seek out the packages because so much of the preparation and distribution of food has been outsourced to specialists, mostly industrial concerns but the artisans persist in niches.  That’s certainly true of the croissant, few making their own whether basic or embellished and one of the latest of the croissant crazes is FSS writ large: the crookie.

Miss Sina's crookie (without added topping or powered sugar).

A crookie is a croissant stuffed with chocolate chip cookie dough and its very existence will be thought particularly shameful by some Parisian purists because it was first sold in December 2023 by the Boulangerie Louvard, located on Rue de Châteaudun in Paris’s 9^th arrondissement which, in an Instragram post announced the arrival: “Our pure butter croissant, awarded the seventh best croissant in the Île-de-France region in 2022, is made every morning with a 24-hour fermented milk sourdough and layered with Charente butter.  For our cookie dough, we use one of the best and purest chocolates in the world, from @xoco.gourmet.”  Offered originally in a test batch to test the market, the boulangerie soon announced “The concept was well received, so we're keeping it.  Available every day in-store!”

Unlike a Cronut which (at least in its pure form) demands three days to make, the charm of the crookie is its elegant simplicity and Instagrammers quickly deconstructed and posted the instructions:

(1) With a serrated knife, cut open a croissant lengthwise, leaving a “hinge” at the back.

(2) Add 2-3 tablespoons of your chocolate chip cookie dough (from a packet or home-made).

(3) Close the two sections of croissant wholly encasing the dough.

(4) When the dough is almost cooked (time will vary according to oven and the volume of dough but it takes only a few minutes), remove from oven.

(5) Add more cookie dough to the top of croissant and return to the oven for final bake.

(6) When the outside is crispy and the centre gooey, remove from oven and top with a dusting of powdered sugar.

Some crookie critics don't recommend either adding the second lashing of dough or the powered sugar because they tend to "overwhelm" the croissant and limit the surface area, thereby denying the dish some of the essential crispiness.  

The croissant in fashion

Louis Vuitton Loop (part number M81098).  Created by Nicolas Ghesquière (b 1971) for the Cruise 2022 Collection, the Loop is described as a "half-moon baguette" and was inspired by the earlier Croissant bag, the original a less fussy design.

Lindsay Lohan in T-shirt with croissant theme.

While a handbag lends itself well to the shape of a crescent, it does inherently limit the efficiency of space utilization but this aspect is often not a primary goal in the upper reaches of the market.  With garments however, although actually a common component because the shape makes all sorts of engineering possible such as the underwire of the bra or other constructions where any sort of cantilever effect is demanded, it’s usually just an element rather than a design motif.  As a playful touch, a distinctive crescent moon or croissant might appear on a T-shirt or scarf but it’s rare to see a whole garment pursue the theme although they have appeared on the catwalks where they attract the usual mix of admiration and derision.   

Sarah Jessica Parker in "croissant dress".

Sometimes though, such things escape the catwalk.  In 2022 the actor Sarah Jessica Parker (b 1965) appeared in HBO's And Just Like That, a spin-off (2021-2022) of the Sex and the City TV series (1998-2024), wearing an orange Valentino couture gown from the house’s spring/summer 2019 collection.  It recalled a large croissant, the piece chosen presumably because the scene was set in Paris although it must have been thought the viewers needed the verisimilitude laid on with a trowel because also prominent was a handbag in the shape of the Eifel Tower.  A gift to the meme-makers, admiration for the dress was restrained.

Caduceus

Caduceus (pronounced kuh-doo-see-uhs, kuh-doo-syoos, kuh-doo-shuhs or kuh-dyoo-shus)

(1) In Classical Mythology, the staff entwined with two serpents and bearing a pair of wings at the top, carried by Hermes (Mercury) as messenger of the gods.

(2) The official wand carried by a herald in ancient Greece and Rome.

(3) A symbol (☤) representing a staff with two snakes wrapped around it, used to indicate merchants and messengers.  It is often substituted for the staff of Asclepius as a symbol of medicine and the medical profession, the basis for this apparently the adoption of the caduceus by the US Army Medical Corps (USAMC).

1585–1595: From the Latin, a variant of cādūceus & cādūceum, from the Doric Ancient Greek καρύκειον (kārȳ́keion) (herald's wand or staff), this and the Attic Greek κηρύκειον (kērúkeion) derived from κῆρυξ (kêrux) (herald, public messenger), the construct being kārȳk- (stem of kârȳx) (herald) + -eion, neuter of -eios (the adjectival suffix).  The word was related to κηρύσσω (kērússō) (I announce).  Caduceus is a noun and caducean is an adjective; the noun plural is caducei.

Staff of Caduceus.

A long tradition of use seems to have created the impression the caduceus is the true symbol of medicine rather than the classically correct staff of Asclepius.  Winged with two serpents coiling around it, it represented Hermes (and the Roman Mercury), the messenger of the gods, guide of the dead and protector of merchants, shepherds, gamblers, liars, and thieves.  By extension, the caduceus became also a recognized symbol of commerce and negotiation, two realms in which balanced exchange and reciprocity are recognized as ideals (if not always common practice).  However, nothing in the Classical tradition associated the caduceus with medicine or physicians.

Staff of Asclepius.

The true symbol of matters medical was the Staff of Asclepius.  In Greek mythology, Asclepius, the son of Apollo the physician, was the deity associated with healing and medicinal arts.  Such was his skill he surpassed his reputation of his father and was believed to be able to evade death and to bring others back to life from the brink of death and beyond.  There has long been debate about the significance of the serpents and although in Greek mythology snakes were considered sacred, there have been many theories offered to account for the association with healing.  One idea was the snake may symbolize rejuvenation (on the basis of the way in which the reptiles shed their skin) while an alternative explanation was it represented the healing of snakebites. 

Asclepiusian: Lindsay Lohan as a compelling (if unconvincing) nurse, Maroon 5 Halloween Bash, October 2011.

The significance of the staff was even more practical and may have been an allusion to the traditional treatment of a parasitic nematode called Dracunculus medinensis (Guinea worm) in which, doctors would cut a slit in the skin right in its path and, when it poked its head from the wound, take a small stick and slowly wrap the worm around it until it was fully removed. The infection is relatively rare today, but the same method of extraction is still used.  The erroneous use of the caduceus as the symbol of medicine appears dates from its adoption in 1902 as the insignia of the US Army Medical Corps (USAMC), many commercial, academic and governmental institutions following the military’s lead.  The choice in 1902 however was no mistake and the caduceus was the deliberate choice of Brigadier General George Miller Sternberg (1838-1915; US Army Surgeon General 1893-1902) who was attracted to the idea of it as a symbol of neutrality and non-aggression, as it was also used as a flag of truce and safe passage (a token of a peaceful embassy, it was originally an olive branch).  A bacteriologist dedicated to the scientific method, he believed that the caduceus would be a more fitting symbol for the medical corps than the Rod of Asclepius, which he felt was too closely associated with mythology and religion.

Official portrait of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney (b 1947; governor of Massachusetts 2003-2007, junior US senator (R-Utah) since 2019) unveiled in a ceremony on the Grand Staircase at the Statehouse, Boston, July 2009.

Governor Romney’s official gubernatorial portrait was notable for the inclusion of a nested image of his wife (Ann, b 1949, the one with the “two Cadillacs”), something not included in the paintings of his 69 predecessors in the governor’s mansion.  That would have made the 52 x 37” (1320 x 920 mm) painting interesting enough for amateur psychiatrists but it included also a leather-bound folder carefully placed on the desk and embossed with a gold-colored caduceus.  This the governor wanted as a representation of the Massachusetts health-care bill he signed into law in 2006.

The artist, Richard Whitney (b 1949), was interviewed and revealed working the symbol into the work presented a greater challenge to the painting’s composition than the inclusion of Mrs Romney.  He sketched concepts with the symbol in a frame on the desk and another with it mounted on the wall but neither proved satisfactory and it was only a chance viewing of the leather folder used to hold legislation awaiting the governor’s signature which provided the inspiration.  That proved artistically uncontroversial, unlike the nested image of Mrs Romney, the state art committee which oversees official portraits objecting on the basis it had never been done before.  This was however the United States and in the spirit of the Medici, Governor Romney reminded the committee members he was paying for the portrait and he could have on it whatever he wanted.  His wishes prevailed but the artist did insist only one of them could be smiling; both would have been too much.

Miniature

Miniature (pronounced min-ee-uh-cher, min-ee-choor or min-uh-cher)

(1) A representation or image of something on a small or reduced scale.

(2) A greatly reduced or abridged form or copy.

(3) A very small painting, especially a portrait, showing fine detail on ivory or vellum.

(4) The art of executing such a painting.

(5) Historically, an illuminated letter or other decoration in a manuscript.

(6) In packaged alcoholic drinks, the small (usually 50 ml) bottles of spirits typically used in hotel mini-bars.

(7) Being, on, or represented on a small scale; reduced.

(8) In military dress, small versions of medals and decorations, worn on certain social occasions.

1580–1590: From the Italian miniatura (miniature painting), from the Medieval Latin miniātūra, the construct being miniāt(us) + -ūra (-ure) (From –u(s) (the suffix forming passive perfect participles) +‎ -ra (the nominal suffix).  Miniature is a noun, verb & adjective and miniaturization is a noun; the noun plural is miniatures.

Words undergo shifts in meanings or gain new senses which operate in parallel for a number of reasons including popular use, technological change, foreign influences and mistakes.  The modern meaning of “miniature” (a small version of something) arose because of a misunderstanding by medieval scholars who conflated miniāre (to paint red, (in illuminating manuscripts)) (from minium (the fiery red pigment used during the Middle Ages to ornament manuscripts)) with the Latin minimus (small (and in the strict technical sense used in Latin “not less or little but least”)).  Had the scholars of a few centuries ago got it right then miniature would have meant “an illuminated text”.  Long before there were printing presses, a trained elite worked as scribes, laboriously writing out by hand the books, scrolls and other manuscripts which were the preserve of the church, the rich and the relative few others who were literate.  In the west (things were a little more advanced in the Far East), literally whatever was printed on some form of parchment was the work of human hands and the slight variation in the style between one page and the next can be used to work out where the efforts of one scribe stopped and another began.

Illuminated manuscripts.

The process was to press a pigmented point against the surface which left the marks forming the letters and this was usually done in black but to enliven things, some characters or shapes were formed in red, often for titles, the large initial letters which marked the start of a paragraph (a tradition which persists to this day although the use of color is now rare) or the decorative drawings which usually in some way related to the subject of the text.  The Latin name for the red pigment (made either from cinnabar or red lead) was minium, and the corresponding verb meaning “to color with minium” was miniāre.

Lindsay Lohan in miniature: My Scene Goes Hollywood Lindsay Lohan Doll Gift Set by Mattel (autographed by the subject).

For the scholars who created the basis of the early Italian language, the connection between the decorative drawings rendered in red with miniare was so persuasive that miniare came to mean “to decorate a manuscript with a small drawing”.  A noun form of the word (miniatura) referred to the art of illuminating (ie adding illustrations) and in time this lost any hint of the use of a red pigment; it came to be applied whatever the color.  Because the “illuminations” (as the illustrations in manuscripts were called) were small compared with most drawings & paintings, miniatura came to be used to describe any small portrait or painting and, in the way language picked up figurative forms, eventually to anything very small. In English, “miniature” in that sense had been adopted by the late sixteenth century.

A 700 ml bottle of Gin might sell for US40 in a liquor store (US$2.85 per 50 ml) while a hotel might charge US$25 for the 50 ml miniature in a mini-bar (US$350 per 700 ml).  Sill, sometimes one really wants a G&T.

The concept of the miniature is well understood but the use is nuanced.  We have for decades lived in the age of miniaturization (now done at the atomic level) but the term “miniature” really makes sense only at the human scale.  In the military there are miniatures (which are scaled-down versions of decorations worn at certain social functions) and in a hotel mini-bar (a few still exist and they can be tempting if paying the high prices with OPM (other people’s money)) a 50 ml bottle of gin is a miniature, a small-scale rendition of the more familiar 700 or 1125 ml containers.  Both those examples are small versions of something larger but the most obvious instances of modern miniaturization are in electronics but nobody calls a smaller version of an integrated circuit a “miniature” even if both are structurally identical, differing only in scale.  So, the essence of the miniature is not merely that it’s minute, microscopic, diminutive, tiny or minuscule but that it is recognizably a smaller version of something which is familiar in a larger form.  In English, words in the vein of “miniature” actually have a tangled history.  Although it’s now close to extinct, “minify” was once a favorite among those too fastidious to tolerate the improper use of “minimize”.  Minify (the third-person singular simple present tense was minifies, the present participle minifying and the simple past and past participle minified) was a nineteenth century back-formation from magnify, creating its exact opposite.  There was also minish but all sources list it as archaic (although the popularity of diminish remains undiminished).

Small but not a “miniature”: Evening train to Hawthorn (circa 1889) by Tom Roberts (1856-1931) of the Heidelberg School.

In art history, the term “miniature” is specifically applied and not necessarily to all small paintings.  In August 1899, a number of artists of the Heidelberg School staged the 9 by 5 Impression Exhibition in Melbourne, Australia, the name a reference to most of the 183 works on display being painted on the cedar wood lids of cigar-boxes, all measuring 9 x 5 inches (229 x 127 mm).  The choice of medium was not an artistic device but reflected the impoverished artists’ need for an alternative to expensive canvas, most of the lids obtained for free from a tobacconist shop run by a family member.  The works were thus not “miniatures” in the accepted sense of the artistic tradition, even though they conformed with the structural definition and one criticism at the time was they resembled the small preliminary sketches artists would often make before commencing a larger work in the same style; interesting perhaps to academics and critics but hardly suitable for exhibition.  The size of the lids was actually not significant and had they been somewhat smaller or larger the art would have been much the same and the Heidelberg School’s particular impressionist technique was quite distinct from the broken colour technique of the French and it became the style of landscape painting that would for decades be the dominant form in Australia.  Controversial at the time, the 9 x 5s actually sold well, the public reacting more favorably than the critics, still not ready for the “shocks of the new” which awaited them in the new century and the surviving 9 x 5s now sell for up to Aus$1 million.

A seventeenth century miniature of the Italian School, oil painting on hard stone with a carved, golden frame (80 x 90 mm (3.14 x 3.54 inches).

Antidisestablishmentarianism

Antidisestablishmentarianism (pronounced an-tee-dis-uh-stab-lish-muhn-tair-ee-uh-niz-uhm)

Opposition to the withdrawal of state support or recognition from an established (state) church.

1838: A compound word: anti + dis + establishment + arian + ism.  Anti- is from the Middle English from the Latin from the Ancient Greek.  It’s a prefixal use of antí; akin to the Sanskrit ánti (opposite), the Latin ante and the Middle Dutch ende.  Dis- is a Latin prefix used to impart the meanings “apart,” “asunder,” “away,” “utterly,” or having a privative, negative, or reversing force.  In English, it’s long been used freely, especially with these latter senses, as an English formative.  Establishment is drawn from the Old French establissement (and persists in Modern French as établissement), derived from the verb establir from the Old Occitan establir, from Latin stabilīre (present active infinitive of stabiliō); cognates include Occitan establir, French établir and Italian stabilire.  The –arian suffix dates from circa 1530, from the Late Latin ariānus.  It was a suffix forming personal nouns corresponding to Latin adjectives ending in -ārius or English adjectives or nouns ending in –ary and subsequently proved productive in English with other Latinate stems, forming nouns denoting a person who supports, advocates, or practices a doctrine, theory, or set of principles associated with the base word (authoritarian, vegetarian etc).  The –ism suffix is from the Ancient Greek –ismos & -isma noun suffixes, often directly, often through the Latin –ismus & -isma, though sometimes through the French –isme or the German –ismus, all ultimately from the Greek.  It appeared in loanwords from Greek, where it was used to form action nouns from verbs and on this model, was used as a productive suffix in the formation of nouns denoting action or practice, state or condition, principles, doctrines, a usage or characteristic, devotion or adherence (criticism; barbarism; Darwinism; despotism; plagiarism; realism; witticism etc).

Portrait of King Henry VIII, circa 1509, unknown artist.  This is the earliest portrait of Henry as king of England known to have survived.  It’s hung in the Denver Art Museum.

It was Henry VIII (1491–1547; King of England (and Ireland after 1541) 1509-1547) who created what endures in England to this day as the established church, the phrase “Church of England” becoming frequently used immediately after the act of separation in 1534.  The king separated the English church from the authority of Rome to become one of a number created in the wake of the Protestant Reformation, not because of any theological or doctrinal differences, but in order to secure the annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon (1485-1536).  Having found the pope unwilling to annul, he had himself instead declared supreme head of the Church in England, the schism with Rome (with the exception of a brief interruption), unhealed to this day.  Problem solved.  There is a distinction between the Church in England and the Church of England, the roots of Christianity in the British Isles established during England’s time as a province of the Roman Empire early in the first millennium.  From these beginnings there were forks and regional divergences until 597 when a Gregorian mission by Augustine of Canterbury visited, Christianity in England from that point subject to the authority of the Pope.  So it continued until 1534, England even once providing a pope (Adrian IV, circa 1100- 1159, pope 1154-1159), noted now for his contribution to the Irish problem unsolved even now.

Generally pointless and the Germans do it better

With twenty-eight letters and twelve syllables, antidisestablishmentarianism is often cited as the longest word in English.  However, floccinaucinihilipilification (a waggish schoolboy creation in Latin meaning “the act or habit of describing or regarding something as worthless”, the construct being floccus (a wisp) +‎ naucum (a trifle) +‎ nihilum (nothing) +‎ pilus (a hair) + -fication (process of becoming)) is one letter longer and the longest non-technical word in English.  It was once used in a debate in the UK House of Commons, although, even that wasn’t the longest ever spoken in Westminster, pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis (a factitious creation said to mean “a lung disease caused by inhalation of very fine silica dust usually found in volcanos”) having been earlier used during a select committee enquiry.  An opportunist extension of the medical term pneumonoconiosis, it was coined during the proceedings of the National Puzzlers' League convention in 1935 in an attempt to create English’s longest word but was dismissed by dictionaries as fake, clinicians and textbooks still referring to the disease as pneumonoconiosis, pneumoconiosis, or silicosis.  British dictionaries may feel compelled to include antidisestablishmentarianism but many overseas publications do not, on the basis there’s hardly any record of its use except in lists of long words which some editors treat as lexicographical freak shows.  Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary lists the longest as electroencephalographically, a physician’s diagnostic too.

English doesn't encourage the conjuring of the long compound words familiar in German.  The classic long German word is Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän (42 letters) meaning "Danube steamship company captain" but there are others, not all of which dictionaries accept.  Betäubungsmittelverschreibungsverordnung (41 letters) means "regulation requiring a prescription for an anaesthetic”; Bezirksschornsteinfegermeister (30 letters) means “head district chimney sweep"; Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaften (39 letters) means "legal protection insurance companies".  Enterprising Germans created Donaudampfschifffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft (80 letters) meaning "association of subordinate officials of the head office management of the Danube steamboat electrical services" but this was held to be bogus and rejected by all authorities which maintained the 63 letter Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz ("beef labelling regulation and delegation of supervision law") remained the longest.  It was a real word in actual (if rare) use though usually through the more manageable abbreviation ReÜAÜG but it was rendered obsolete by changes to EU regulations.  Currently, the longest word accepted by most German dictionaries is the 36 letter Kraftfahrzeughaftpflichtversicherung (automobile liability insurance).

Regarding the substantive matter of disestablishment, it’s a political position developed in nineteenth century Britain in opposition to the Liberal Party’s proposal for the removal of the Anglicans’ status as the state church of England, Ireland, and Wales.  The establishment was maintained in England, but the Church of Ireland was disestablished in 1871 and the four Church of England dioceses in Wales were disestablished in 1920, becoming the Church in Wales.  Given the nature of the modern Church of England, it’s a matter seldom mentioned as a constitutional reform of pressing importance.