Press

Press (pronounced pres)

(1) To act upon with steadily applied weight or force.

(2) To move by weight or force in a certain direction or into a certain position.

(3) To compress or squeeze, as to alter in shape or size.

(4) To hold closely, as in an embrace; clasp.

(5) To flatten or make smooth, especially by ironing.

(6) To extract juice, sugar, etc from by pressure.

(7) To manufacture (phonograph records, videodiscs, or the like), especially by stamping from a mold or matrix.

(8) To exert weight, force, or pressure.

(9) In weightlifting, to raise or lift, especially a specified amount of weight, in a press.

(10) To iron clothing, curtains, etc.

(11) To bear heavily, as upon the mind.

(12) To compel in another, haste, a change of opinion etc.

(13) Printed publications, especially newspapers and periodicals.  Collectively, all the media and agencies that print, broadcast, or gather and transmit news, including newspapers, newsmagazines, radio and television news bureaus, and wire services.

(14) The editorial employees, taken collectively, of these media and agencies.

(15) To force into military service.

1175-1225: From the Middle English press & presse (throng, trouble, machine for pressing) from the Old French, from presser (to press) from the Latin pressāre, frequentative of premere (past participle pressus).  In Medieval Latin it became pressa (noun use of the feminine of pressus).  The noun press (a crowd, throng, company; crowding and jostling of a throng; a massing together) emerged in the late twelfth century and was from the eleventh century Old French presse (a throng, a crush, a crowd; wine or cheese press), from the Latin pressare.  Although in the Late Old English press existed in the sense of "clothes press", etymologists believe the Middle English word is probably from French.  The general sense of an "instrument or machine by which anything is subjected to pressure" dates from the late fourteenth century and was first used to describe a "device for pressing cloth" before being extended to "devices which squeeze juice from grapes, oil from olives, cider from apples etc".  The sense of "urgency, urgent demands of affairs" emerged in the 1640s.  It subsequently proved adaptable as a technical term in sports, adopted by weightlifting in 1908 while the so-called (full-court press) defense in basketball was first recorded in 1959.

The specific sense "machine for printing" was from the 1530s, extended by the 1570s to publishing houses and to publishing generally (in phrases like freedom of the press) from circa 1680 although meaning gradually shifted in early 1800s to "periodical publishing, journalism".  The phrase “the press” meaning "journalists collectively" is attested from 1921 but this has faded from use with the decline in newspapers and the preferred reference has long been “the news media”.  The first gathering called a press conference is attested from 1931, though the thing itself had been around for centuries (and in some sense formalized during the First World War (1914-1918) although a politician appears first to have appointed a “press secretary” as late as 1940.  The term “press release” (an official statement offered to a newspaper and authorized for publication) is from 1918.

The sense "force into military (especially naval) service" emerged (most famously in the “press-gang” (a detachment under command of an officer empowered to press men into public service)) in the 1570s, an alteration (by association with the verb press) of the mid-fourteenth century prest (engage by loan, pay in advance (especially in reference to money paid to a soldier or sailor on enlisting), from the Latin praestare (to stand out, stand before; fulfill, perform, provide), the construct being prae- (before) + stare (to stand), from the primitive Indo-European root sta- (to stand, make or be firm).  The verb was related to praesto (ready, available).

Most meanings related to pushing and exerting pressure had formed by the mid-fourteenth century and this had been extended to mean "to urge or argue for" by the 1590s.  The early fourteenth century pressen (to clasp, hold in embrace) extended in meaning by the mid century also to mean "to squeeze out" & "to cluster, gather in a crowd" and by the late 1300s, "to exert weight or force against, exert pressure" (and also "assault, assail" & "forge ahead, push one's way, move forward", again from the thirteenth century Old French presser (squeeze, press upon; torture)", from the Latin pressare (to press (the frequentative formation from pressus, past participle of premere (to press, hold fast, cover, crowd, compress), from the primitive Indo-European root per- (to strike)).  The sense of "to reduce to a particular shape or form by pressure" dates from the early fifteenth century while the figurative (“to attack”) use was recorded some decades earlier.  The meaning "to urge; beseech, argue for" dates from the 1590s.

The letter-press referred to matter printed from relief surfaces and was a term first used in the 1840s (the earlier (1771) description had been "text," as opposed to copper-plate illustration.  The noun pressman has occasionally been used to refer to newspaper journalists but in the 1590s it described "one who operates or has charge of a printing press" and was adopted after the 1610s to refer to "one employed in a wine-press".  A similar sharing of meaning attached to the pressroom which in the 1680s meant "a room where printing presses are worked" and by 1902 it was also a "room (in a courthouse, etc.) reserved for the use of reporters".  To press the flesh (shake hands) came into use in 1926 and a neglected use of “pressing” is as a form of torture.  Under a wide variety of names, pressing was a popular method of torture or execution for over four-thousand years; mostly using rocks and stones but elephants tended to be preferred in south and south-east Asia.  It’s a medieval myth that Henry VIII (1491–1547; King of England 1509-1547) invented pressing but he certainly adopted it as a method of torture with his usual enthusiasm.  Across the channel, under the French civil code, Peine forte et dure (forceful and hard punishment) defined pressing.  Used when a defendant refused to plead, the victim would be subjected to having heavier and heavier stones placed upon his or her chest until a plea was entered, or as the weight of the stones on the chest became too great for the subject to breathe, fatal suffocation would occur.

Pressed Duck

The sequence of pressing a duck: The duck press (left), pressing the duck (centre) & pressed duck (right).

(1) Select a young, plump duck.

(2) Wringing the neck, quickly asphyxiate duck, ensuring all blood is retained.

(3) Partially roast duck.

(4) Remove liver; grind and season liver.

(5) Remove breast and legs.

(6) Take remaining carcass (including other meat, bones, and skin) and place in duck-press.

(7) Apply pressure in press to extract and collect blood and other juices from carcass.

(8) Take extracted blood, thicken and flavor with the duck's liver, butter, and Cognac.  Combine with the breast to finish cooking.  Other ingredients that may be added to the sauce include foie gras, port wine, Madeira wine, and lemon.

(9) Slice the breast and serve with sauce as a first serving; the legs are broiled and served as the next course.

The tabloid press: On 29 November 2006, News Corp's New York Post ran its front page with a paparazzi photo Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan, the snap taken just prior to dawn in outside a Los Angeles nightclub.  Remembered for the headline Bimbo Summit, the car was a Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren (C199 (2003-2009)).

The term "tabloid press" refers to down-market style of journalism designed to enjoy wide appeal through an emphasis on scandals, sensation and sport, featuring as many celebrities as possible.  The word tabloid was originally a trademark for a medicine which had been compressed into a small tablet, the construct being tab(let) + -oid (the suffix from the Ancient Greek -ειδής (-eidḗs) & -οειδής (-oeidḗs) (the ο being the last vowel of the stem to which the suffix is attached), from εἶδος (eîdos) (form, likeness)).  From the idea of the pill being the small version of something bigger, tabloid came to be used to refer to miniaturized iterations of a variety of stuff, newspapers being the best known use.  A tabloid is a newspaper with a compact page size smaller than broadsheet but despite the name, there is no standardized size for the format but it's generally about half the size of a broadsheet.  In recent decades, economic reality has intruded on the newspaper business and there are now a number of tabloid-sized newspapers which don't descend to the level of tabloid journalism (although there has been a general lowering of standards).

Pressing

Pressing (pronounced pres-ing)

(1) Urgent; demanding immediate attention; Insistent, earnest, or persistent.

(2) Any phonograph record produced in a record-molding press from a master.

(3) To act upon with steadily applied weight or force; to move by weight or force in a certain direction or into a certain position; to weigh heavily upon.

(4) To compress or squeeze, as to alter in shape or size.

(5) To flatten or make smooth, especially by ironing.

(6) To extract juice, sugar, oil etc by applying pressure.

(7) To produce shapes from materials by applying pressure in a mold; a component formed in a press.

(8) To bear heavily, as upon the mind.

(9) A ancient form of torture and execution.

(10) The process of improving the appearance of clothing by improving creases and removing wrinkles with a press or an iron.

(11) A memento preserved by pressing, folding, or drying between the leaves of a flat container, book or folio (usually with a flower, ribbon, letter, or other soft, small keepsake).

1300-1350: From the Middle English presing, from the Classical Latin pressāre, (frequentative of premere (past participle pressus)).  In Medieval Latin pressa was the noun use of feminine pressus, similar to Old French presser (from Late Latin pressāre).  In English, the meaning “exerting pressure" dates from the mid-fourteenth century and sense of "urgent, compelling, forceful" is from 1705.  In the sense of a machine for printing, this spread from the machine itself (1530s) to publishing houses by the 1570s and to publishing generally by 1680.  In French, pressing is a pseudo-Anglicism.

The construct was press + ing.  Press dates from the late twelfth century and was from the Middle English press & presse (throng, trouble, machine for pressing) from the Old French, from presser (to press) from the Latin pressāre, frequentative of premere (past participle pressus) and in Medieval Latin it became pressa (noun use of the feminine of pressus).  The noun press (a crowd, throng, company; crowding and jostling of a throng; a massing together) emerged in the late twelfth century and was from the eleventh century Old French presse (a throng, a crush, a crowd; wine or cheese press), from the Latin pressare.  Although in the Late Old English press existed in the sense of "clothes press", etymologists believe the Middle English word is probably from French.  The general sense of an "instrument or machine by which anything is subjected to pressure" dates from the late fourteenth century and was first used to describe a "device for pressing cloth" before being extended to "devices which squeeze juice from grapes, oil from olives, cider from apples etc".  The sense of "urgency, urgent demands of affairs" emerged in the 1640s.  It subsequently proved adaptable as a technical term in sports, adopted by weightlifting in 1908 while the so-called (full-court press) defense in basketball was first recorded in 1959.  The suffix –ing was from the Middle English -ing, from the Old English –ing & -ung (in the sense of the modern -ing, as a suffix forming nouns from verbs), from the Proto-West Germanic –ingu & -ungu, from the Proto-Germanic –ingō & -ungō. It was cognate with the Saterland Frisian -enge, the West Frisian –ing, the Dutch –ing, The Low German –ing & -ink, the German –ung, the Swedish -ing and the Icelandic –ing; All the cognate forms were used for the same purpose as the English -ing).  Pressing is a noun & verb, pressingness is a noun and pressingly is an adverb; the noun plural is pressings.

Tarpeia Crushed by the Sabines (circa 1520) by Agostino Veneziano (Agostino de' Musi; circa 1490–circa 1540).

In Roman mythology it was said that while Rome was besieged by the Sabine king Titus Tatius, the commander of the Sabine army was approached by Tarpeia, daughter of Spurius Tarpeius, commander of the Roman citadel.  Tarpeia offered the attacking forces a path of entry to the city in exchange for "what they bore on their left arms." Although it was sometimes spun that she actually meant they should cast of their shields and enter in peace, the conventional tale is she wanted their gold bracelets.  The Sabines (sort of) complied, throwing their shields (which they carried upon their left arms) upon her, pressing her until she died.  Her body was then cast from (although some accounts say buried beneath) a steep cliff of the southern summit of the Capitoline Hill which has since been known as the Rupes Tarpeia or Saxum Tarpeium (Tarpeian Rock (Rupe Tarpea in Italian)). 

Cassius Convicted of Political Wrong-Doing is Killed by Being Thrown from the Tarpeian Rock Rome (circa 1750), woodcut by Augustyn Mirys (1700–1790).

The Sabines were however unable to conquer the Rome, its gates miraculously protected by boiling jets of water created by Janus, the legend depicted in 89 BC by the poet Sabinus following the Civil Wars as well as on a silver denarius of the Emperor Augustus circa 20 BC.  Tarpeia would later become a symbol of betrayal and greed in Rome and the cliff from which she was thrown was, during the Roman Republic, the place of execution or the worst criminals: murderers, traitors, perjurors and troublesome slaves, all, upon conviction by the quaestores parricidii (a kind of inquisitorial magistrate) flung to their deaths.  The Rupes Tarpeia stands about 25 m (80 feet) high and was used for executions until the first century AD.

Pressing by elephant.

Under a wide variety of names, pressing was a popular method of torture or execution for over four-thousand years; mostly using rocks and stones but elephants tended to be preferred in south and south-east Asia.  The elephant had great appeal because, large and expensive to run, they could be maintained as a symbol of power and authority and there were few better expressions of a ruler’s authority that the killing of opponents, trouble-makers or the merely tiresome.  Properly handled, an elephant could be trained to torture or kill although, being beasts from the wild, things could go wrong and almost certainly some unfortunate souls ear-marked for nothing but the brief torture of a pressing under the elephant’s foot (for technical reasons, they don’t have hooves) ended up being crushed to death.  Even that presumably added to the intimidation and in some places in India, this means of dispatch was said to be known as Gajamoksha (based on the Gajendra Moksha (The Liberation of Gajendra (the elephant)), an ancient Hindu text in which elephants were prominent) although these stories are now thought to have been a creation of the imaginations of British writers who, in the years before, found a ready audience for fantastical tales from the Orient.  As told, a Gajamoksha seems to have been more a trampling than a pressing and the political significance of the business was it was done in public; the manufacturing of entertainment and spectacle apparently common to just about every regime in human history.  That there were public displays of torture and execution using elephants is part of the historical record but the surviving depictions seem to suggest pressing rather than trampling was the preferred method.  A trampling elephant does sound like something which may have had unintended consequences.

As a asset in the inventory, elephants were versatile and in addition to helping to pull or carry heavy loads to battlefields, they could be also a potent assault weapon and, sometimes outfitted with armor (historically of thick leather), were used in a manner remarkably close in concept to the original deployment of tanks by the British Army in 1916, charging the line, breaking up fortifications and troop formations, allowing the infantry to advance through the gaps.  While opponents being trampled underfoot by a charging elephant may not have been the prime military directive, it was a useful adjunct.  For those who survived, it may only have been a stay of execution and while there’s little to suggest elephants were widely used in the bloodbaths which sometimes followed battlefield defeat, there are records of them ritualistically pressing to death a vanquished foe.

A pressing in progress; presumably this profession attracted those who really enjoyed their work and found it a calling.

It’s a myth Henry VIII (1491–1547; King of England (and Ireland after 1541) 1509-1547) invented pressing but he certainly adopted it as a method of torture with his usual enthusiasm.  Across the channel, under the French civil code, Peine forte et dure (forceful and hard punishment) defined pressing: When a defendant refused to plead, the victim would be subjected to having heavier and heavier stones placed upon his or her chest until a plea was entered, or as the weight of the stones on the chest became too great for the subject to breathe, fatal suffocation would occur.

Enthusiastic about if not innovative in torture, Henry VIII continues to influence modern fashion.  His combination of a loose jacket, short skirt and tights is here reprised by Lindsay Lohan.

Not all Kings of England have been trend-setters but Henry VIII’s style choices exerted an influence not only on his court and high society but also elsewhere in Europe.  What came to be known as the “Tudor style” was really defined by him and the markers are elaborate embellishments, rich fabrics (velvet, silk, and brocade much favoured), intricate embroidery and many decorative details.  The Tudor style also took existing motifs such as the codpiece (the pouch or flap covering the front opening of men's trousers or hose) and in the early sixteenth century these became larger and more exaggerated, the function in formal wear more decorative than practical.  He also made popular (again) the padded shoulders and sleeves which had been seen for centuries but Henry’s innovation was deliberately to reference the lines used on suits of armor, something which added to what in later years was his broad & imposing figure and modern critics have noted this was something which would visually have re-balanced his increasingly portly figure.  London wasn’t than the centre of fashion it later became and some historians have noted the distinctly French influence which entered the court after the arrival of Henry’s first wife, the Spanish-born Catherine of Aragon (1485–1536; Queen of England 1509-1533) and at least some of what was imported with the unfortunate bride became part of the Tudor style.

Palter

Paltering (pronounced pawl-ter)

(1) Insincerely or deceitfully to talk or act; to lie or use trickery; to prevaricate or equivocate in speech or actions.

(2) To bargain with; to haggle (now rare).

(3) Carelessly to act; to trifle (now rare).

(4) To babble; to chatter (archaic).

1530–1540: The original meaning was “indistinctly to speak; to mumble”.  The origin is obscure and etymologists suggest it may have been an alteration of “falter” in (the sense of a “faltering delivery of speech” same sense, with an appended “p-“ from palsy (in pathology, a complete or partial muscle paralysis of a body part, often accompanied by a loss of feeling and uncontrolled body movements such as shaking).  The predominant meaning by the mid-seventeenth century was the use to describe the particular form of deceptive or misleading conduct that is the telling of a partial truth in such as way as to avoid a “technical lie” yet convey an untruth.  The alternative suggestion is a connection with the Middle English palter (rag, trifle, worthless thing), from Middle Low German palter (rag, cloth).  The verb has long been a mystery because it had the frequentative, but there is nothing to suggest the existence of a verb “palt”; it’s not impossible it may have been an alteration of paltry (trashy, trivial, of little value; of little monetary worth; someone despicable; contemptibly unimportant).  The suffix –ing was from the Middle English -ing, from the Old English –ing & -ung (in the sense of the modern -ing, as a suffix forming nouns from verbs), from the Proto-West Germanic –ingu & -ungu, from the Proto-Germanic –ingō & -ungō. It was cognate with the Saterland Frisian -enge, the West Frisian –ing, the Dutch –ing, The Low German –ing & -ink, the German –ung, the Swedish -ing and the Icelandic –ing; All the cognate forms were used for the same purpose as the English -ing).

Via the notion of “talk in a trifling manner, babble” came (by the 1580s) the sense of both “insincere words” or “misleading statements; “playing fast and loose" with the truth.  The sense of “trifle away, squander” was in use by the 1620s.  The now obsolete noun palterly (paulterly the alternative spelling) is unrelated.  It was a late Middle English form from palter (a rag, worthless thing), from the Middle Low German palter (rag, cloth) and was used to convey the sense of something (or someone) "mean or parsimonious".  Palter and paltered are verbs and palterer & paltering are nouns & verbs; the more common noun plural is palterings but all forms of the word are rare outside of academic use in the analysis of politics and commerce.  Palter has been used as an irregular noun and palteresque is tempting in the post-truth age.

Paltering is an old and, outside of academia, rarely used word but the practice it describes, while hardly a modern invention, seems now more prevalent in public discourse so a revival may happen.  Paltering is a term used to describe the act of deceiving someone by telling the truth, but in a misleading or incomplete way, something more devious even than the many lies of crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013) (which she usually “explains” by saying she “misspoke”).  The essence of paltering was captured in the elegant phrase of former UK cabinet secretary Sir Robert Armstrong (1927-2020; later Baron Armstrong of Ilminster) who, under cross-examination in the “Spycatcher” trial (1986), when referring to a letter, answered: “It contains a misleading impression, not a lie. It was being economical with the truth.”  Whether the old Etonian was aware of much post-Classical writing isn’t known (at Christ Church, Oxford he read the “Greats” (the history and philosophy of Ancient Greece & Rome)) but he may have been acquainted with Mark Twain’s (1835-1910) Following the Equator (1897) in which appeared: “Truth is the most valuable thing we have.  Let us economize it.” or the earlier thoughts of the Anglo-Irish Whig politician Edmund Burke (1729-1797) who in his Two Letters on the Proposals for Peace with the Regicide Directory (1796) noted: “Falsehood and delusion are allowed in no case whatsoever: But, as in the exercise of all the virtues, there is an economy of truth.”  Just as likely however is that Sir Robert had been corrupted by his long service in HMG (Her Majesty’s Government) and was thinking of: “The truth is so precious, it deserves an escort of lies”, a phrase often attributed (as are many) to Sir Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955), but there’s some evidence to suggest he may have picked it up from comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) and even if it wasn’t something the old seminarian coined, it was the mantra by which he lived so he deserves some credit.  Sir Robert’s phrase entered the annals of legal folklore and was good enough to have been lifted from a script from the BBC satire Yes Minister.

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

Unlike crooked Hillaryesque blatant lying (which involves providing false information), paltering involves using truthful statements (or at least those with the quality of plausible deniability) to create a false impression or intentionally to mislead someone.  Paltering is achieved by (1) omitting crucial details, (2) emphasizing certain truths while downplaying or not disclosing others or (3) presenting information in a way that technically is correct but which leads one’s interlocutor(s) to draw erroneous conclusions.  In practice, the mechanics of paltering usually are (1) Selective Truth: (highlighting facts that support one’s position while ignoring those that do not, (2) Omission: Leaving out vital information that would correct a listener's misunderstanding(s) and (4) Context Manipulation: Presenting information out of context to alter its meaning.  The classic wording of the oath or affirmation given by witnesses in legal proceedings (“the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth”) is essentially an “anti-paltering” device.

So paltering is insidious because it is the artful use of the truth to create which might be thought a “constructive lie” and the word seems first to have enjoyed its latter day revival when political scientists in the US adopted it when analyzing texts and there is qualitative research which suggests those who palter can tend to rationalize the act by expressing sentiments along the lines of “lying is worse”.  Helpfully, the Trump White House was (and may yet again be) a place where many case-studies in the “compare & contrast” of lies and paltering were created and for that we should be grateful.

An example of the “simple lie” came when Sean Spicer (b 1971; White House Press Secretary & Communications Director 2017) early in 2021 informed the White House press corps that Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021) had enjoyed a greater larger live audience at his inauguration than that which had attended Barack Obama’s (b 1961; US president 2009-2017) in 2009.  All available evidence appeared to suggest Obama’s numbers were up to twice those of Trump and if Spicer hadn’t brought it up (it was hardly a great affair of church or state) probably nobody else would have mentioned it but for Trump, who borrowed for his campaign so many of the techniques he’d learned from his career in reality television, viewer numbers were professional life and death and thus the lie. 

Kellyanne Conway in hoodie: Miss January, Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute's annual Conservative Women Calendar (2009).

The Trump administration actually gave the world a linguistic gift, another term for paltering: “alternative facts”, first mentioned by Trump campaign strategist and counselor, Kellyanne Conway (b 1967; senior counselor to the president, 2017-2020).  Ms Conway used the words during a Meet the Press interview to describe the use of statistics quoted by Sean Spicer (b 1971; White House Press Secretary & Communications Director, 2017), numbers which, prima facie, seemed dubious.  She sought later to clarify “alternative facts” by defining the phrase as "additional facts and alternative information" which, when deconstructed, probably did add a layer of nuance but really didn’t help.  Journalists, not a crew always entirely truthful, decided to help and called the phrase "Orwellian", provoking a spike on the search engines as folk sought out "doublethink" and "newspeak"; sales of George Orwell’s (1903–1950) Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) said overnight to have risen several-dozen fold.  The relationship between the press and the Trump White House was never likely to be friendly but “alternative facts” meant things started badly almost from day one.  That had no discernible effect on Mr Trump who committed a classic act of paltering when, in arguing he had won the 2020 presidential election and it had been “stolen” from him by the corrupt, Democratic Party controlled “deep state”, emphasized that on election day he had “won more votes that any sitting president in history”.  That was of course literally true and something to be noted by psephologists for their trivia nights (psephologists know how to have a good time) but about as relevant to the results of the election as was crooked Hillary Clinton getting three million-odd more votes than Mr Trump in 2016.

The increase in the use of "paltering" is attributed to (1) the internet which encouraged the posting of lists of rare, obscure or archaic words and (2) the use in academia, the publications of which are indexed and harvested by statistical grabbers like Google's Ngrams.  Tempting though it may be, Mr Trump being an arch palterer probably did little to boost the use of the word although he may have inspired others to adopt the technique.

Because of the way Google harvests data for their ngrams, they’re not literally a tracking of the use of a word in society but can be usefully indicative of certain trends, (although one is never quite sure which trend(s)), especially over decades.  As a record of actual aggregate use, ngrams are not wholly reliable because: (1) the sub-set of texts Google uses is slanted towards the scientific & academic and (2) the technical limitations imposed by the use of OCR (optical character recognition) when handling older texts of sometime dubious legibility (a process AI should improve).  Where numbers bounce around, this may reflect either: (1) peaks and troughs in use for some reason or (2) some quirk in the data harvested.

Lectern

Lectern (pronounced lek-tern)

(1) A reading desk in a church on which is placed the Bible and from which lessons are read during the church service.

(2) A stand (usually with a slanted top), used to hold a book, papers, speech, manuscript, etc, sometimes adjustable in height to suit the stature of different speakers.

1400s: From the late Middle English lectryn, from the Middle English lectron, lectrone and the early fourteenth century lettorne & letron, from the Middle French letrun, from the Old French leitrun & lettrun, from the Medieval Latin lēctrīnum from the Late Latin lēctrum (lectern), from lectus (from which English gained lecture), the construct being the Classical Latin leg(ere) (to read) (or legō (I read)) + -trum (the instrumental suffix).  The Latin legere (to read (literally "to gather, choose") was from the primitive Indo-European root leg- (to collect, gather) which begat derivatives meaning "to speak” (in the sense of “to pick out words”).  In linguistics, the process by which in the fifteenth century the modern form evolved from the Middle English is called a partial re-Latinization.  Lectern is a noun; the noun plural is lecterns.

Crooked Hillary Clinton (in pantsuits), at the podium, during her acclaimed lecture tour “The significance of the wingspan in birds & airplane design”.

Some words are either confused with lectern or used interchangeably, in one case to the point there may have been a meaning shift.  In English use, a lectern was originally a stand on which was placed an open Bible.  Made usually either from timber or brass (depending on the wealth or status of the church), they were fashioned at an angle which was comfortable for reading and included some sort of ledge or stays at the bottom to prevent the book sliding off.  A pulpit (inter alia "a raised platform in a church, usually partially enclosed to just above waist height)" was where the minister (priest, vicar, preacher etc) stood when delivering the sermon and in many cases, there were lecterns within pulpits.  Pulpit was from the Middle English pulpit, from the Old French pulpite and the Latin pulpitum (platform).  Podium (inter alia "a platform on which to stand; any low platform or dais") was a general term for any raised platform used by one or more persons.  A lectern might be placed upon a podium and in an architectural sense most pulpits appear on a permanent structure which is podium-like although the term is not part of the language of traditional church architecture.  Podium was from the Latin podium, from the Ancient Greek πόδιον (pódion) (base), from the diminutive of πούς (poús) (foot) and was an evolution of podion (foot of a vase).  In formal settings, US use often prefers podium and one of the world's more famous podiums is that used for the White House's press briefings, a place that has proved a launching pad for several subsequent careers in political commentary.  Some press secretaries have handled the role with aplomb and some have been less than successful including Donald Trump's (b 1946; US president 2016-2021) first appointee Sean Spicer (b 1971; White House Press Secretary & Communications Director 2017), whose brief tenure was characterized as "weaponizing the podium", memorably parodied by the Saturday Night Live (SNL) crew.   

Lindsay Lohan at a lectern some might call a rostrum, World Music Awards, 2006.

A dais (inter alia "a raised platform in a room for a high table, a seat of honor, a throne, or other dignified occupancy, such as ancestral statues or a similar platform supporting a lectern or pulpit") is for most practical purposes a podium and thus often effectively a synonym although dais probably tends to be used of structures thought more grand or associated with more important individuals (dead or alive).  There's also a literature detailing support of or objections to the various pronunciations (dey-is, dahy-is & deys-s), most of which are class or education-based.  Dais was from the Middle English deis, from the Anglo-Norman deis, from the Old French deis & dois (from which modern French gained dais), from the Latin discum, accusative singular of discus (discus, disc, quoit; dish) and the Late Latin discum (table), from the Ancient Greek δίσκος (dískos) (discus, disc; tray), from δικεῖν (dikeîn),(to cast, to throw; to strike).  It was cognate with the Italian desco and the Occitan des.

A rostrum (inter alia "a structure used by dignitaries, orchestral conductors etc") is really a lectern with a built in dais.  It's thus an elaborate lectern.  Rostrum was a learned borrowing from the Latin rōstrum (beak, snout), the construct being from rōd(ō) (gnaw) + -trum, from the primitive Indo-European rehd- + -trom.  The early uses were in zoology (beak, snout etc) and naval architecture (eg the prow of a warship), the use in sense of lecterns a back-formation from the name of the Roman Rōstra, the platforms in the Forum from which politicians delivered their speeches (the connection is that the Rōstra were decorated with (and named for) the beaks (prows) of ships famous for being victorious in sea battles.

The ups and downs of politics: Downing Street's prime-ministerial lectern.

The Times of London published a hexaptych noting the evolution of the prime-ministerial lectern which has become a feature of recent British politics, especially the turnover at the top.  Whether any psychological meanings can be derived from the style of the cabinet maker’s craft is debatable although some did ponder Boris Johnson's (b 1964; UK prime-minister 2019-2022) dark finish and the twisted nature of that used by Liz Truss (b 1975; UK prime-minister Sep-Oct 2022).  The Times did however note a few things including the modest origins of the concept in the lecterns used by Tony Blair (b 1953; UK prime-minister 1997-2007) and later by Gordon Brown (b 1951; UK prime-minister 2007-2010).  Then, the lectern was a simple, off-the-shelf item familiar to anyone who has endured PowerPoint presentations and the cables trailing over Downing Street were a reminder of those (now almost forgotten) times when WiFi wasn’t sufficiently robust to be trusted even a few steps from a building.  Also commented upon was that unlike his most recent predecessors who enjoyed their own, custom-made lectern, Rishi Sunak (b 1980; UK prime-minister since 2022) had to use a recycled item borrowed from Downing Street stocks.  That happened because the premiership of Liz Truss was so short and her demise so sudden.  In her photograph, the fallen autumnal leaves behind her seem quite poignant.

Weaponizing the podium: SNL's take on then White House Press Secretary & Communications Director Sean Spicer, 2017.

Harlot

Harlot (pronounced hahr-luht)

(1) A prostitute or promiscuous woman; one given to the wanton; lewd; low; base.

(2) By extension, in political discourse, an unprincipled person (now rare).

(3) A person given to low conduct; a rogue; a villain; a cheat; a rascal (obsolete).

(4) To play the harlot; to practice lewdness.

Circa 1200: From the Middle English harlot (young idler, rogue), from the Old French harlot, herlot & arlot (rascal; vagabond; tramp”), of obscure origin but thought probably of Germanic origin, either a derivation of harjaz (“army; camp; warrior; military leader”) or a diminutive of karilaz (man; fellow); most speculate the first element is from hari (army).  It was cognates with the Old Provençal arlot, the Old Spanish arlote and the Italian arlotto.  The long obsolete Middle English carlot (a churl; a common man; a person (male or female) of low birth; a boor; a rural dweller, peasant or countryman) is thought probably related.  Harlot was a noun and (less often) a verb, harlotry a noun and harlotize a verb; the present participle was harloting (or harlotting), the simple past and past participle harloted (or harlotted) and there’s no evidence exotic forms like harlotistic or harlotic ever existed, however useful they might have been.  Harlot is a noun & verb, harlotry is a noun, harlotish is an adjective, harlotize and harloted & harloting are verbs; the noun plural is harlots.  The adjective harlotesque is non-standard.

Harlot as a surname dates from at least the mid-late 1100s but by circa 1200 was being used to describe a “vagabond, someone of no fixed occupation, an idle rogue" and was applied almost exclusively to men in the Middle English and Old French.  Geoffrey Chaucer (circa 1345-1400) used harlot in a positive as well as pejorative sense and in medieval English texts it was applied to jesters, buffoons, jugglers and later to actors.  What is the now prevalent meaning (prostitute, unchaste woman) was originally the secondary sense but it had probably developed as early as the late fourteenth century, being well-documented by the early fifteenth.  Doubtless, it was the appearance in sixteenth century English translations of the Bible (as a euphemism for "strumpet, whore") which cemented the association.

In harlotesque mode: Lindsay Lohan in fancy dress as Suicide Squad's (2016) Harley Quinn, Halloween party, London, November 2016.  It may be a cliché but for purposes of fancy dress, fishnet stockings (or tights) are the motif of choice for those wanting the "harlot look". 

The biblical imprimatur didn’t so much extend the meaning as make it gender-specific.  The noun harlotry (loose, crude, or obscene behavior; sexual immorality; ribald talk or jesting) had been in use since the late fourteenth century and the choice of harlot in biblical translation is thought an example of linguistic delicacy, a word like “strumpet” though too vulgar for a holy text and “jezebel” too historically specific.  In this, harlot is part of a long though hardly noble tradition of crafting or adapting words as derogatory terms to be applied to women.  It has to be admitted there are nuances between many but one is impressed there was thought to be such a need to be offensive to women that English contains so many: promiscuous, skeezer, slut, whore, concubine, courtesan, floozy, hooker, hussy, nymphomaniac, streetwalker, tom, strumpet, tramp, call girl, lady of the evening, painted woman et al.  So the bible is influential although there’s a perhaps surprising difference in the translations of that prescriptive duo, Leviticus & Ezekiel: In the King James Version (KJV 1611), harlot appears in thirty-eight versus, but once in Leviticus, nine times in Ezekiel, some of the memorable being:.

Genesis 38:24: And it came to pass about three months after, that it was told Judah, saying, Tamar thy daughter in law hath played the harlot; and also, behold, she [is] with child by whoredom. And Judah said, Bring her forth, and let her be burnt.

Leviticus 21:14: A widow, or a divorced woman, or profane, [or] an harlot, these shall he not take: but he shall take a virgin of his own people to wife.

Joshua 6:25: And Joshua saved Rahab the harlot alive, and her father's household, and all that she had; and she dwelleth in Israel [even] unto this day; because she hid the messengers, which Joshua sent to spy out Jericho.

Isaiah 1:21: How is the faithful city become an harlot! it was full of judgment; righteousness lodged in it; but now murderers.

Ezekiel 16:15: But thou didst trust in thine own beauty, and playedst the harlot because of thy renown, and pouredst out thy fornications on every one that passed by; his it was.

Ezekiel 16:41: And they shall burn thine houses with fire, and execute judgments upon thee in the sight of many women: and I will cause thee to cease from playing the harlot, and thou also shalt give no hire any more.

Ezekiel 23:19: Yet she multiplied her whoredoms, in calling to remembrance the days of her youth, wherein she had played the harlot in the land of Egypt.

Ezekiel 23:44: Yet they went in unto her, as they go in unto a woman that playeth the harlot: so went they in unto Aholah and unto Aholibah, the lewd women.

Amos 7:17: Therefore thus saith the LORD; Thy wife shall be an harlot in the city, and thy sons and thy daughters shall fall by the sword, and thy land shall be divided by line; and thou shalt die in a polluted land: and Israel shall surely go into captivity forth of his land.

Nahum 3:4: Because of the multitude of the whoredoms of the wellfavoured harlot, the mistress of witchcrafts, that selleth nations through her whoredoms, and families through her witchcrafts.

Stanley Baldwin election campaign poster, 1929.

Phrases like “shameless harlot” and “political prostitution” used to be part of the lively language of politics but social change and an increasing intolerance of gendered terms of derision have rendered them almost extinct (the language of metaphorical violence is next for the chopping-block: guillotined, knifed, axed etc all on death row).  Harlot’s most notable political excursion came in 1931 when Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947; thrice UK prime-minister 1923-1937) was facing an orchestrated campaign against his leadership by the newspaper proprietors, Lords Rothermere (1868–1940) & Beaverbrook (1879-1964), the "press barons" then a potent force (Beaverbrook called them collectively the "press gang").  Before commercial television & radio, let alone the internet and social media, most information was disseminated in newspapers and their influence was considerable.  The press barons though, whatever their desires, couldn't be dictatorial, as Beaverbrook found when his long campaign for empire free-trade achieved little but they sometimes behaved as if they could at a whim move public opinion and often politicians were inclined to believe them.  Within the UK at the time, Rothermere & Beaverbrook weren’t exactly “by Murdoch out of Zuckerberg” but it’s hard to think of a better way of putting it.

Baldwin in 1931 found a good way of putting it.  His leadership of the Tory party challenged because he refused to support them in what was even then the chimera of empire free trade, he responded with a strident speech which appealed to the public’s mistrust of the press barons, using a phrase from his cousin Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), ironically a friend of Beaverbrook.  Rothermere & Beaverbrook he denounced as wanting power without responsibility, “…the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.”  It was the most effective political speech in the UK until 1940, Baldwin flourishing and empire free trade doomed, although Beaverbrook would keep flogging the corpse for the rest of the 1930s.  Often underestimated, David Lloyd George (1863–1945; UK prime-minister 1916-1922) and Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) would later acknowledge Baldwin as the most formidable political operator of the era.

The oratory of Lloyd-George and Churchill may be more regarded by history but Baldwin did have a way with words and less remembered lines from another of his famous speeches may have influenced climate change activist Greta Thunberg (b 2003).  Delivered in the House of Commons on 10 November 1932 in a debate on disarmament, he argued for an international agreement to restrict the development of the aircraft as a military weapon:

“I think it is well also for the man in the street to realize that there is no power on earth that can protect him from being bombed, whatever people may tell him.  The bomber will always get through…”.  “The only defense is in offence, which means that you have got to kill more women and children more quickly than the enemy if you want to save yourselves. I mention that so that people may realize what is waiting for them when the next war comes.”

Prescient about the way the unrestricted bombing of civilians would be the Second World War’s novel theatre, the phrase "the bomber will always get through" reverberated around the world, chancelleries and military high commands taking from it not the need for restrictions but the imperative to build bomber fleets, Baldwin not planting the seed of the idea but certainly reinforcing the prejudices and worst instincts of many.  That was the power of the phrase; it subsumed the purpose of the speech, the rest of which was essentially forgotten including the concluding sentences:

"I do not know how the youth of the world may feel, but it is no cheerful thought to the older men that having got that mastery of the air we are going to defile the earth from the air as we have defiled the soil for nearly all the years that mankind has been on it."

“This is a question for young men far more than it is for us…”  “Few of my colleagues around me here will see another great war…”  “At any rate, if it does come we shall be too old to be of use to anyone.  But what about the younger men, they who will have to fight out this bloody issue of warfare; it is really for them to decide. They are the majority on the earth. It touches them more closely. The instrument is in their hands.”

“If the conscience of the young men will ever come to feel that in regard to this one instrument the thing will be done.”  “As I say, the future is in their hands, but when the next war comes and European civilization is wiped out, as it will be and by no force more than by that force, then do not let them lay the blame on the old men, but let them remember that they principally and they alone are responsible for the terrors that have fallen on the earth.”

Hansard recorded Baldwin’s speech being greeted with “loud and prolonged cheers”, his enthusiasm for disarmament making him as popular as Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940; UK prime-minister 1937-1940) would briefly be in 1938 when he returned from Germany with a piece of paper bearing Hitler’s signature an a guarantee of “peace in our time”.  Soon, the views on both men would shift but historians today treat them more sympathetically.

The old and the young.

Greta Thunberg (b 2003) and Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021), United Nations, New York, September 2019.  Ms Thunberg was attending a UN climate summit Mr Trump snubbed, going instead to a meeting on religious freedom.  Proving that God moves in mysterious ways, Mr Trump took a whole new interest in evangelical Christianity when he entered the contest for the 2016 presidential election.  Ms Thunberg seems to have noted the final paragraphs of Baldwin's speech and while convinced it’s quite right to “lay the blame on the old men” and their blah, blah, blah, which she thinks insufficient to lower carbon emissions, seems confident youth will prove more receptive to doing something about us defiling the earth.

Greta Thunberg, How Dare You? (Acid house mix).