Indigo

Indigo (pronounced in-di-goh)

(1) A blue dye obtained from various plants, especially of the genus Indigofera, or manufactured synthetically.

(2) A descriptor of color indigo, widely defined commercially and ranging from a deep violet blue to a dark, greyish blue (sometimes as "indigo blue").

(3) In technical use, as indigo blue (also casually referred to as indigotin or indigo), a dark-blue, water-insoluble, crystalline powder (C₁₆H₁₀N₂O₂), having a bronze-like luster, the essential coloring principle of which is contained along with other substances in the dye indigo and which can be produced synthetically.

(4) Any of numerous hairy plants belonging to the genus Indigofera, of the legume family, having pinnate leaves and clusters of usually red or purple flowers (the best-known of the plants including Amorpha (false indigo), Baptisia (wild indigo), and Psorothamnus and Dalea (indigo bush)).

(5) In zoology, as the Eastern indigo snake, the common name for the Drymarchon couperi.

(6) In zoology, as the indigobird (or indigo bird), any of various African passerine birds of the family Viduidae.

(7) A (rarely used) female given name.

1550s: The spelling change from indico to indigo happened in the 1550s, used originally in the sense of the “blue powder obtained from certain plants and used as a dye”.  Indigo was from the Spanish indico and the Portuguese endego (the Dutch indigo exclusively was from Portuguese), all from the Latin indicum (indigo), from the Ancient Greek ἰνδικόν (indikón) (Indian blue dye (literally “Indian substance”)), a neuter of indikos (Indian), from the Indic Ἰνδία (Indía).  Indic is a subgroup of the Indo-Iranian branch of Indo-European languages that includes Sanskrit, Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, and many other languages of India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka; Indo-Aryan.  It replaced the late thirteenth century Middle English ynde, from the thirteenth century Old French inde (indigo; blue, violet), again from the Latin indicum; the earlier name in Mediterranean languages was annil or anil.  In the magical-realist novel Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo (1982) by African American feminist Ntozake Shange (1948–2018), the name of one protagonist is Indigo and it continues to be used as a given name for females.  Indigo is a noun & adjective and indigotic is an adjective; the noun plural is indigos or indigoes.

Sir Issac Newton, light and the "two prism experiment" 

As used to refer to “the color of indigo”, use dates from the 1620s and in 1704 Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727) adopted indigo as the name for the darkest of the two blues on his spectrum of the visible colors of light.  Newton identified seven colors in the spectrum of light (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet) and although he was a great figure of science and the Enlightenment, he was also an alchemist and theologian who published notable works of Biblical scholarship, something which may account for the choice of seven, that number being of some significance in scripture.  By objective analysis, there are probably six colors in the spectrum, but Newton’s world view which attributed something mystical to the number demanded there be seven.  He decided in advance light was made of seven colors but his experimental method to vindicate this theory of differential refraction was sound.  The orthodox view of the time suggested a prism acted on any incident light to add colour; Newton wished to prove what was really happening was a process of separation refraction.  For this, he used two prisms.  The first produced the full spectrum of colors and from this Newton isolated narrow beams of light of a single colour, directing them at the second prism, finding that for all colors, there was no further change as the beam passed through the second prism: “When any one sort of Rays hath been well parted from those of other kinds, it hath afterwards obstinately retained its colour, not with standing my utmost endeavours to change it.”

Lindsay Lohan shopping at Indigo Seas, North Robertson Boulevard, Los Angeles, February 2009.  Most fashion houses would regard her dress’s blue as “too blue” to be within the indigo range but to illustrate how far (in commercial use) indigo can travel from blue, some would call this "Spanish indigo" (Hex: #003C92; RGB: 0, 60, 148).

Although some use extends even to grey, generally, indigo is a range of bluish-purples between blue and violet in the color wheel and such is the reverence for Newton it’s considered still one of the seven spectral colors (indigo’s hex code is #4B0082),  In this, although it may visually be dubious, indigo has fared better than the unfortunate Pluto, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) voting in 2006 to re-classify Pluto as a dwarf planet on the basis the icy orb failed to meet a set of criteria which the IAU claimed had been accepted for decades.  The IAU are a bunch of humorless cosmic clerks, something like the Vogons ("...not actually evil, but bad-tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous.") in Douglas Adams’ (1952–2001) Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1978) and, not affected by romantic tales, have refused to restore Pluto to planethood, leaving it desolate, lonely and cold; it's the solar system’s emo.  Indigo place on the spectrum seems however secure and according to Canva (the internet’s authority on colors), it’s the color of devotion, wisdom, justice, and higher knowledge; tied to intuition and what is not seen; it is also considered spiritual.  More prosaically, Canva list indigo as hexadecimal #4b0082, with RGB values of Red: 29.4, Green: 0, Blue: 51 and CMYK values of Cyan: 0.42, Magenta: 1, Yellow: 0, Black (K):0.49.  The decimal value is 4915330.  It has a hue angle of 274.6 degrees, a saturation of 100% and a lightness of 25.5%. #4b0082 color hex could be obtained by blending #9600ff with #000005. Closest websafe color is: #330099.

Darker then violet: Canva's example of a classic indigo.

Apothaneintheloish

Apothaneintheloish (pronounced uh-poth-un-inn-th-loe-ish)

An expression of a wish to die.

1968: The construct was apo + thanein + thelo + ish.  The Ancient Greek prefix ἀπό- (apó-) was from the preposition ἀπό (apó) (from, away from), from the primitive Indo-European hepo (off, away), the ultimate source also of the English words "off" & "of" and of (ab- came via Latin).  The English –ish was appended to create the adjectival form.  The -ish suffix was from the Middle English -ish & -isch, from the Old English -isċ (-ish (the suffix)), from the Proto-West Germanic -isk, from the Proto-Germanic -iskaz (-ish), from the primitive Indo-European -iskos.  It was cognate with the Dutch -s, the German -isch (from which Dutch would gain -isch), the Norwegian, Danish & Swedish -isk or -sk, the Lithuanian -iškas, the Russian -ский (-skij) and the Ancient Greek diminutive suffix -ίσκος (-ískos).  It was used to create adjectives (standard and (in the modern era) increasingly non-standard, even in slang as the stand-alone "ish" indicating “sort of”, “kind of”, “tending towards” etc).  In colloquial use it became a popular way to create both adjectives & nouns with a diminutive or derogatory implication.  The word was coined by the author Anthony Burgess (1917–1993).  Apothaneintheloish is an adjective.

A black-figure pottery vase (circa 500 BC) showing Thanatos (Death) and Hypnos (Sleep) carrying the dead body of the hero Sarpedon; discovered in Attica, Greece and now on display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

In Greek mythology, Thantos was the god of death and the significance of Burgess's choice was that Thantos was associated specifically with a “graceful, peaceful departure from life”.  So, a vision of Thantos was a tap on the shoulder, a notice to quit the world and something known in English as "the visitation of the Angel of Death" and, except for those few wishing to go out in a “blaze of glory”, as one's death goes, a visit from Thantos was about as good as it got.   Thantos appears sometimes in commentaries by Freudians & neo-Freudians but Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) never used the word.  He used Todestrieb (death drive), the construct being Tod (death) +‎ -es- (in German a genitival interfix used to link elements in certain compounds) +‎ Trieb (sprout (but in the technical jargon of psychoanalysis specifically “drive” (in the sense of “desire, urge, impulse”)).  Freud in his famous Jenseits des Lustprinzips (Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920)) borrowed the word (which he used more often in the plural (Todestriebe) (death drives) from Russian psychiatrist Sabina Spielrein (1885-1942 and a student and lover of Carl Jung (1875–1961)) who in 1912 had published the essay Die Destruktion als Ursache des Werdens (Destruction as the Cause of Coming Into Being).  The relationship between Freud & Spielrein was both convivial and entirely professional.  Thanatos came into popular use in psychoanalysis after it appeared in a paper by Austrian-American psychologist Paul Federn (1871–1950 and, like Freud, trained in Vienna).  Federn used Thanatos as a dichotomous contrast with eros (from the Ancient Greek ἔρως (érōs) (love, desire”) which in psychiatry) is used to describe the human “life drive” (the collective instincts for self-preservation).  In the profession it's used also of the libido and it's not only among the Freudians the link between the two uses is thought so fundamental.

The Greek phrase Apothanein thelo (I want to die) concludes the epigraph of TS Eliot’s (1888–1965) The Waste Land: “Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidiin ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent: Σίβνλλα τί ϴέλεις; respondebat illa: άπο ϴανεΐν ϴέλω.”  The text was from the satirical novel Satyricon, presumed written by the Roman courtier Petronius (Gaius Petronius Arbiter, circa 27–66), Eliot’s translation being: “I saw with my own eyes the Sibyl at Cumae hanging in a cage, and when the boys said to her: ‘Sibyl, what do you want?’ she answered: ‘I want to die.’”

Apollo and the Cumaean Sibyl (circa 1670), oil on canvas by Giovanni Domenico Cerrini, (1609-1681).  Sibyl is holding a handful of dust.

The Satyricon was a collection of tales, the misadventures of Trimalchio, a one-time gladiator in the Roman Empire of the first century AD and the passage is one of the few fragments of the text still extant.  Sibyl of Cumae was one of the great beauties of the age and Apollo, wanting her for his own, offered to grant her any wish.  Without a moment’s thought she asked to “live for as many years as there were grains in a handful of dust.”  Apollo granted her wish, but she anyway refused his affections and she came to regret things, over the centuries growing older and more decrepit but unable to die.  What she had wanted was an eternal youth but instead decayed into a figure tiny, frail and confined to her bed.  When Trimalchio speaks of her in the Satyricon, he describes her as a tourist attraction, a withered, ancient relic, longing to die.  As recounted by the Roman Poet Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso; 43 BC–17 AD) in his Metamorphoses, Sibyl lived a thousand years and as she shrunk and shrivelled, eventually she was kept in an ampulla (jar); in her final years, only the faint echo of her voice remained.  She might have said, as the 99 year old Archbishop Daniel Mannix (1864–1963; Archbishop of Melbourne 1917-1963) grew fond of saying: “I have lived too long, but that is not my fault”.  That would have been half correct but, given Sibyl’s calling of prophesy, she had only herself to blame.

Apothaneintheloish appeared first in 1968 in an essay written by Anthony Burgess and published in The Listener:

“Waking crapulous and apothaneintheloish, as I do most mornings these days, I find a little loud British gramophone music over the bloody mary helps me adjust to the daily damnation of writing.”  It can be translated as: “Suffering from taking too much strong drink and feeling I want to die.”

Burgess had an extraordinary knowledge of words so probably felt entitled to kick language around a bit and it’s likely he’d not much have been concerned at any pedant drawing a red circle around the appended –ish, content the linguistic sin of mixing an English suffix into a otherwise Greek formation was minor compared with the world gaining a new adjective.  Such was the skill of Burgess that in his writing the rare and unusual words slurred effortlessly into the text, avoiding the tiresome, jarring effect achieved by some who seem intent to flaunt what Henry Fowler (1858–1933) in his austere A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926) called the “pride of knowledge”; Henry Fowler knew sin when he saw it on the page.  Others can do it too: the historian Piers Brendon (1940) made the discovery of novel forms a pleasure and when reading Umberto Eco’s (1932–2016) Il pendolo di Foucault (Foucault's Pendulum (1988)), some can’t resist keeping pencil & paper at hand, just to note down the most memorable.

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

Burgess though probably made the trick most fun and without Burgess, would it have become known even slightly that vaccine can be an adjective?  It means “cow-like” so is a word for those who find bovine too repetitive or a bit common.  He also included gems like myrmidon (a faithful follower of someone or some institution who follows orders without demur), oneiric (of, suggestive of or pertaining to dreams), proleptic (the act of anticipation) and exiguity which should baffle most used to anything similar; it means “a tiny quantity” and was from the Latin exiguus (scanty), the antonym for which was the Pythonesque sounding adaequatus, the perfect passive participle of adaequō, the construct being ad- (near, at; towards, to) +‎ aequō (make equal, level or smooth).

Apothaneintheloish will of late have gained a new audience with the publication in January 2024 of The Devil Prefers Mozart, On Music and Musicians, 1962-1993, a compilation (Carcanet Press, edited by PaulPhillips (b 1956), an associate professor at Stanford University)) of Burgess’s (mostly) previously published pieces on the topic of music (something he grants and unexpectedly wide vista).  Although now remembered mostly as a novelist and literary critic, his attachment to music was life-long, reflected in the breadth of the 75 chapters of essays, reviews and letters plus the odd interview & transcription.  The book is divided into five parts (1) Musical Musings which ranges from thoughts on Shakespeare to the Beatlemania of the 1960s and the punk movement a decade later, (2) Composers and Their Music which is a list hardly less eclectic, including Monteverdi, Mozart, Wagner & Kurt Weill, (3) Burgess and His Music, a more personal assortment of material including some intriguing liner notes, (4) Performers and Performances which includes some interesting reflections on the less obvious aspects of affording a primacy to “the singer rather than the song” and (5) Of Opera, the West’s supreme art form.  Of particular interest to some will the focus on some of the now less than fashionable British composers, notably William Walton (1902–1983) and Edward Elgar (1857–1934).

Gerti Deutsch's (1908–1979) photograph of Hans Keller (1919-1855), London, 1961.  Keller was a noted Freudian and would these days be thought a suspected postmodernist.

It’s really not even necessary to have any great interest in music to be amused by this book because probably without the reader realizing it, what is so often being explored is the interplay between words and music, Burgess understanding “everything is text” even before the postmodernists made a cult of it.  It’s worth reading also for the waspish comments about the Austrian-born music journalist Hans Keller, best understood after listening to the composition Homage to Hans Keller (1982), written by Burgess in reaction to Keller’s review of his opera Blooms of Dublin (1982) based on James Joyce’s (1882–1941) Ulysses (1922).  Scored for four tubas (which should be a hint), the “homage” was very much in the spirit of Metal Machine Music which in 1975 Lou Reed (1942–2013) handed to his record company.  In that vein, an irony of his fame was that he became best known as the author of the novel A Clockwork Orange (1962) and that happened because of the notoriety achieved by the film version (1971), directed by Stanley Kubrick (1928–1999).

Cover of a first edition A Clockwork Orange (1962), signed by the author, (Aus$18,975.08 on eBay (left)) and a promotional poster for the film version (1971, right).  The film was based on the abridged US edition of the book which omitted the final chapter in which the protagonist undergoes something of a redemption.  That does change the moral effect but some critics thought the distinction slight, the film just too gratuitous in its depiction of sexual violence for the original's anyway ambiguous conclusion to be rendered much different. 

In Flame into Being (1985), his biography of DH Lawrence (1885–1930), Burgess would write: “The book I am best known for, or only known for, is a novel I am prepared to repudiate: written a quarter of a century ago, a jeu d’esprit (literally “game of the spirit” and used here to suggest something intended as a quick comment on an idea rather than anything substantial) knocked off for money in three weeks, it became known as the raw material for a film which seemed to glorify sex and violence. The film made it easy for readers of the book to misunderstand what it was about, and the misunderstanding will pursue me till I die. I should not have written the book because of this danger of misinterpretation, and the same may be said of Lawrence and Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928).”  Scholars cataloguing his papers later found A Clockwork Orange was some two years in the making but that he didn’t deign even to mention the book by name was an indication of something and many suspect he’d have been not unhappy if remembered for the book and not the film which gained him a new audience, if not exactly the one he’d have preferred.  However, for those who like words, The Devil Prefers Mozart, On Music and Musicians contains enough expected Burgessian gems and like apothaneintheloish, there aren’t many other places to find multiguous, parthenogenetical, theodician, apodemoniosis, stichomythia or quinquennium.

Sepia

Sepia (pronounced see-pee-uh)

(1) A dark brown pigment obtained from the ink-like secretion of various cuttlefish, often used with brush or pen in drawing.

(2) A drawing made with this pigment.

(3) A photograph or digital image in the tone recognized as “sepia”.

(4) A specific range of shades of brown, which tend to a reddish tincture.

(5) In photography, a print or photograph rendered within this color range, associated especially with early types such as calotype.  Now easily replicated in software, when using physical film stock it can be produced by first bleaching a print (after fixing), then immersing it for a short time in a solution of sodium sulphide or of alkaline thiourea.

(6) Any of several cuttlefish of the genus Sepia, producing a dark fluid used naturally for defense and, by humans, in various mixes of ink (mostly archaic but still used in technical literature).

1821: From the Italian seppia (cuttlefish), from the Latin sēpia, from the Ancient Greek σηπία (sēpía) (cuttlefish (and its secretion)), the origin of which is uncertain, the orthodox explanation being it was from the Ancient Greek σήπειν (sḗpein) (to make rotten) but there are etymologists who suggest while that’s “semantically possible” (on the basis of the “rotten:” smelling ink), it’s may be from a pre-Greek source.  The Greek sḗpein was related to σήψ (sḗps) (a kind of lizard; also a serpent, the bite of which was alleged to cause putrefaction”).  The Greek sēpía was akin to sepsis.  Sepia & sepian are nouns & adjectives and sepialike (also as sepia-like) is an adjectives; the noun plural is sepias.

The use of the word to describe the brown pigment extracted from the secretions of cuttlefish dates from the 1820s and the “brownish” meaning as applied to drawings was first recorded in English in 1863 (originally as “sepia drawing”); it was extended later to photography and film and it remains a motif in “retro” art and verisimilitude in film & television.  Reflecting the influence of Classical & Medieval Latin in the formation of zoological taxonomy, sepia had been used of the cuttlefish as early as the late-fourteenth century but today such use is rare.  The Latin was also the source of words in a number of languages including the Bulgarian се́пия (sépija), the Catalan sèpia, the Esperanto sepio, the Finnish seepia, the French sépia, the Galician sepia, the German Sepia, the Hungarian szépia, the Japanese: セピア色 (sepiairo), the Portuguese sépia, the Romanian sepia, the Russian се́пия (sépija), the Spanish sepia, the Swedish sepia, the Tagalog sepia and the Turkish sepia.  

The noun sepiolite (in mineralogy, a hydrated magnesium silicate, clay mineral used for carving into decorative articles and smoking pipes (known also as meerschaum), from the same etymological origin as sepia, picked up the name because of the resemblance to cuttlebone.  The -lite suffix (when used formally) was a representation of the Ancient Greek λίθος (líthos) (stone) and was appended to form the names of rocks and minerals.  In informal use (in commerce or humorously (and in politics often disparagingly)) it's a phonetic version of “light” in the sense of “smaller, lesser, reduced in weight”; it's used often for cut-down (sometimes free) versions of software, diet drinks etc.

Montage of Lindsay Lohan red-carpet stills, rendered in vintage calotype sepia.

As an adjective sepian (the comparative more sepian, the superlative most sepian) began life meaning (1) of or pertaining to the sepia (in the sense of the cuttlefish or its dark pigment) and (2) of the color (not of necessity produced with the derived ink).  In the post-war Unites States, sepia was adopted to refer to some of those with darker pigmentation of the skin, specifically applied to black Americans or African Americans.  The emergence was because in many parts of the US, use of most offensive of the N-words had become socially less acceptable in many circles and as this disapprobation trickled down the social spectrum, new slurs were created, sepian presumably attractive because of the history as a description of colors of paint, fabrics etc.  It was thus separated from ethnic identity and could thus be defended as wholly neutral in use.  As a term, it was neither sufficiently widely adopted nor endured in use for long enough for any pejorative association to become attached so it never became part of the linguistic treadmill.

Bridget Bardot (b 1934) in sepia, on set in Viva Maria! (1965).

As an artistic device, sepia is sometimes used in film.  In The Wizard of Oz (1939), one of the most famous uses was to contrast the bleak, sepia-toned scenes in Kansas with the vibrant (techni-) color in the Land of Oz.  A different effect was achieved in The Shape of Water (2017) (which is either a fantasy or science fiction (SF) film depending on who is writing the review), the sepia-toned sequences depicting the protagonist's memories and dreams.  Presumably, directors find sepia a useful device because black & white (the other obvious alternative) has through use become vested with connotations, gained not only from of the association with film noir.

Bonk

Bonk (pronounced bongk)

(1) A bump on the head (usually not severe).

(2) To hit, strike, collide etc; any minor collision or blow.

(3) In slang, a brief intimacy between two people, usually with a suggestion of infidelity; often modified with the adjective quick and only ever used where the act is consensual (less common in North America).

(4) In sports medicine, a condition of sudden, severe fatigue in an endurance sports event, typically induced by glycogen depletion (also in the phrase “hit the wall”).

(5) In snowboarding, to hit something with the front of the board, especially in midair.

(6) In zoology, an animal call resembling "bonk" (such as the call of the pobblebonk (any of various Australian frogs of the genus Limnodynastes)).

1931: A creation of Modern English, the origin remains uncertain but most suspect it was likely imitative of sounds of impact (like bong, bump, bounce or bang) and thus onomatopoetic.  As a slang term for an affaire de coeur, use was first noted in 1975 and has always, depending on context, carried an implication of something illicit or quickly done; purely recreational though always consensual.  The use in sports medicine describing the condition of glycogen depletion references a metaphorical impact as in “hitting the wall”, the first known use in 1952 in endurance sports medicine.  Bonkee, as a descriptor for a "woman of loose virtue", appears to have been a 2014 creation which never caught on which is a shame because there are all sorts of cases where the companion terms "bonker" & "bonkee" might have been handy .  The form "bonkers", referring to the deranged, dated from circa 1957 and was apparently unrelated to the earlier naval slang for “drunk” but alluded rather to what could be the the consequence of a “bonk on the head”.  The third-person singular simple present is bonks, the present participle, bonking and the simple past and past participle, bonked.  Bonk & bonking are nouns & verbs, bonker is a noun, bonky is an adjective, bonked is a verb and bonkers is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is bonks.

Bonkers: "Last Call" 2023 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170 in "plum crazy" (one of the retro colors which reprised those used by Chrysler in the "psychedelic era" of the late 1960s).  3300 were produced, many of which are now being advertised for sale at well above the RRP (recommended retail price).

The Demon 170 was released as part of Dodge’s “Last Call” programme which marked the end of the corporation's run of high-performance V8s, a tradition dating from the early 1950s.  Offered in a bewildering array of configurations in a process which was something like Nellie Melba's (1861-1931) "farewell" tours, the SRT Demon 170 was the most bonkers of a generally bonkers lot.  Rated at 1,025 hp (764 kW), the factory claimed it could accelerate from 0-60 mph (100 km/h) in 1.66 seconds with an elapsed time in the standing ¼ mile (400 metres for those who insist) of 8.91 seconds (terminal speed 151 mph (243 km/h)), setting the mark as the worlds quickest ever standard production car, a reasonable achievement for something weighing 4275 lbs (1939 kg).  By world standards it was also very cheap and on the basis of cost-breakdown vs performance, there was nothing like it on the planet.  In British (and other English-speaking regions although rare in the US) use, "bonkers" can and often is used in an entirely non-pejorative way to suggest something or someone verging on the irrational but in some way astonishing, admirable or inspiring.  Road cars with 600+ horsepower V8 & V12 engines are of course bonkers but we'll miss them when they're gone and it would seem the end is nigh.  Greta Thunberg (b 2003) has expressed no regret at the extinction of this species.  

Bonking Boris

Hand-turned fish bonkers on sale in Jaffray, a village in the south-western Canadian province of British Columbia (left) and the front page of The Sun (7 September 2018; right), a tabloid which rarely lets an alliterative opportunity pass by.  

The noun bonker is (1) a short, blunt hardwood club used by fishers efficiently to dispatch (ie bonking them dead) just-caught fish and (2) according to the Murdoch tabloid The Sun, the adulterous Boris Johnson (b 1964; UK prime-minister 2019-2022).  A bonk by Boris or the club and a not wholly dissimilar outcome ensues; a one-time employer called bonking Boris "ineffably duplicitous" and the estranged (now former) Mrs Johnson presumably agreed.  At the time, the former prime minister had "a bit of previous" in extra-marital bonking and when this one was announced, it was with an alliterative flourish not seen since the headline “BORIS BACKS BREXIT”.  His resignation from Theresa May's (Lady May, b 1956; UK prime-minister 2016-2019) government was unrelated to bonking (as far as is known) and came, in July 2018, three days after a cabinet meeting at Chequers (the prime-minister's country house), where agreement was reached on Mrs May’s Brexit strategy, a document compromised by the need to make a nonsensical impossibility look like good policy.  That can be done but it requires rare skill to be in Downing Street and it's been some time since that could be said. 

Freed by his resignation from the burdens of the Foreign Office, bonking Boris was clearly unconcerned at rumors his opponents in the party were assembling a dossier of some four-thousand words detailing his cheating ways, fondness for cocaine and failings of character and turned his attention to a campaign for the Tory leadership.  As wonderfully unpredictable as the politics of the time were fluid, nobody was quite sure whether he’d go into the inevitable election or second referendum as "leave" or "remain"; it would depend on this and that.  In the end, he remained a leaver and things worked out well, his election victory meaning that for one, brief, shining moment, the three world leaders with the best hair all had nuclear weapons at the same time.

Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021; left), Boris Johnson (centre) and Kim Jong-un (Kim III, b 1982; Supreme Leader of DPRK (North Korea) since 2011; right).

Some hairstyles are more amenable than others to a quick post-bonk rectification.  Kim Jong-un's cut is probably quite good and would bounce back from a bonk with little more than a run-through with the fingers.  Donald Trump however would likely need both tools and product for a post-bonk fix.  Mr Trump usually appears well-fixed unless disturbed by breezes any higher than 2 on the Beaufort scale and even a perfunctory bonk is probably equal to at least 4 on the scale so it would have been interesting to see if Stormy Daniels (Stephanie Gregory, b 1979) lived up to her (stage) name although Mr Trump has denied that bonk ever happened.  Mr Johnson's hair so often looks post-bonk that either his conquests are more frequent even than has been rumored or he asks for a JBF with every cut.  One UK publication suggested exactly that, hinting his instruction was "not one hair in place".  That has the advantage for Mr Johnson in that it's a style essentially the same pre-bonk, mid-bonk and post-bonk and thus pricelessly ambiguous in that merely by looking at him, one couldn't tell if he was going to or coming from a bonk although, one assumes, whichever it was, a bonk would never be far from his mind.  Whatever the criticisms of Mr Johnson's premiership (and there were a few), it's to his eternal credit that in his resignation honours list Ms Kelly Jo Dodge (for 27 years the parliamentary hairdresser) was created a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) for "parliamentary service".  In those decades, she can have faced few challenges more onerous than Mr Johnson’s hair yet never once failed to make it an extraordinary example in the (actually technically difficult) “not one hair in place” style.  Few honours have been so well deserved.

A bandaged Lindsay Lohan waking dazed and confused after a bonk on the head in Falling for Christmas (2022; left) and on the move in Irish Wish (2024).   

In May 2021, Netflix & Lindsay Lohan executed what became a three movie deal, the first (Falling for Christmas) released in the northern winter of 2022, just in time for the season.  She played the protagonist, a pampered heiress who loses her memory after suffering a bonk on the head, waking up to a new life.  The second Netflix release opens in February 2024 and in Irish Wish, the plotline involves her spontaneously wishing for something, subsequently waking up to find the wish granted.  So it’s a variation on the theme of the first (though without the bonk on the head), the twist being in the theme of “be careful what you wish for”.

Bonking Barnaby and the bonk ban

Malcolm Turnbull (b 1954; prime-minister of Australia 2015-2018), a student of etymology, was as fond as those at The Sun of alliteration and when writing his memoir (A Bigger Picture (2020)) he included a short chapter entitled "Barnaby and the bonk ban".  As well as the events which lent the text it's title, the chapter was memorable for his inclusion of perhaps the most vivid thumbnail sketch of Barnaby Joyce (b 1967; thrice (between local difficulties) deputy prime minister of Australia 2016-2022) yet penned:

"Barnaby is a complex, intense, furious personality.  Red-faced, in full flight he gives the impression he's about to explode.  He's highly intelligent, often good-humoured but also has a dark and almost menacing side - not unlike Abbott (Tony Abbott (b 1957; prime-minister of Australia 2013-2015)) - that seems to indicate he wrestles with inner troubles and torments."

Mr Turnbull and Mr Joyce in parliament, House of Representatives, Canberra, ACT.

The substantive matter was the revelation in mid-2017 the press had become aware Mr Joyce (a married man with four daughters) was (1) conducting an affair with a member of his staff and (2) that the young lady was with child.  Mr Turnbull recorded that when asked, Mr Joyce denied both "rumors", which does sound like a lie but in the narrow sense may have verged on "the not wholly implausible" on the basis that, as he pointed out in a later television interview, the question of paternity was at the time “...a bit of a grey area”.  Mr Joyce and his mistress later married and now have two children so all's well that end's well (at least for them) and Mr Turnbull didn't so much shut the gate after the horse had bolted as install inter-connecting doors in the stables.  His amendments to the Australian Ministerial Code of Conduct (an accommodating document very much in the spirit of Lord Castlereagh's (1769–1822; UK foreign secretary 1812-1822) critique of the Holy Alliance) banned ministers from bonking their staff which sounds uncontroversial but was silent on them bonking the staff of the minister in the office down the corridor.  So the net effect was probably positive in that staff having affairs with their ministerial boss would gain experience through cross-exposure to other portfolio areas although there's the obvious moral hazard in that they might be tempted to conduct trysts just to engineer a transfer in the hope of career advancement.  There are worse reasons for having an affair and a bonk for a new job seems a small price to pay.  It's been done before.

Bonk in progress, California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, May 2024.

Bonk in the sense of “a blow to the head” was in May 2024 adapted for use in memes and other publicity tools associated with the protests staged on US university campuses demanding the institutions’ administrators divest from economic and other engagements with Israel and in support of the cause of the Palestinian people for (variously) statehood or freedom from repression.  The scenes were reminiscent of Vietnam War era protests but the emergence of the water-cooler jug as an icon of political dissent was an unexpected moment of levity.  The origin of that was a viral (“bonk, bonk, bonk”) video clip showing an unidentified protester at the California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt bonking a uniformed law-enforcement officer on the helmet with an empty jug (believed to be a capacity of 5 US gallons (19 litres)) of the type which sits atop a water cooler.

Although recalling the similarly alliterative “burn baby, burn” slogan chanted during the Watts race riots in Los Angeles in August 1965, the “bonk, bonk, bonk” was more a symbol of, if not exactly passive resistance, then certainly something short of actual violence although in a legal sense it may have been an instance of both assault and battery as well as other offences.  Around the country, stickers, posters and the inevitable T-shirts appeared within hours with slogans such as “Water Jug, Come and Take It” and “This machine bonks fascists”, a reference to the “THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS” message the left-wing US folk singer Woody Guthrie (1912–1967) wrote on his guitars.  Whether the water jug (bonking and not) will endure as a symbol of protest will depend, like many aspects of language, on whether it gains a sustained critical mass of use.

The "bonk, bonk, bonk" viral video.  In the conventional sense the production values weren't high but that very quality of authenticity accounted for its success.

Fedora

Fedora (pronounced fi-dawr-uh or fed-dohr-uh)

A soft felt or velvet hat with a curled medium-brim, usually with a band and worn with the crown creased lengthwise.

1887: An invention of American English, from Fédora, an 1882 play by Victorien Sardou (1831-1908), the protagonist of which was the Russian princess Fédora Romanoff, played originally by Sarah Bernhardt.  Bernhardt, a noted cross-dresser, wore a center-creased, soft brimmed hat which was adopted by feminists of the age, then known as women's-rights activists.  The name comes from the Russian Федо́ра (Fedóra), feminine form of Фёдор (Fjódor), from the Ancient Greek Θεόδωρος (Theódōros) (gift of god), derived from θεός (theós) (god) and δῶρον (dôron) (gift).  The ultimate root was the Indo-European dhes- (forming words for religious concepts) + dōron (gift) from do- (to give)).

In the Western world, between the demise of the top hat after the First World War and the abandonment of hats in the 1960s, three variations on a theme, the Fedora, the Trilby and the Homburg vied for choice as men’s headgear, all popular in a way the bowler hat never was.  Fedoras used to be made mostly from wool, cashmere, rabbit or beaver felt, some of the more expensive varieties blended with mink or chinchilla (and rarely mohair, vicuña, guanaco or cervelt).  After enjoying a 1990s revival, they came to be made from any available material, including modern synthetics.

The Trilby (left), Homburg (centre) and the Fedora (right).

The Fedora first became fashionable during the 1920s, displacing the less rakish Homburg (named after Homburg in Imperial-era Germany from where it originated as hunting headgear) although it was the similar, though narrow-brimmed, Trilby (also known in the UK as the “Brown Trilby”) which was said to be more popular with the rich.  The Trilby proved attractive to those often at the track, apparently because, with a narrow brim and one slightly turned up at the back, it made more convenient the carrying of a pair of binoculars.  The name Trilby was derived from a hat worn in the stage adaptation of George du Maurier's (1834-1896) 1894 novel Trilby.  Just another hat in most countries, it suffered by association in Germany because a black Trilby was the choice of most Gestapo officers.

Lindsay Lohan wearing Fedora with coat of unknown provenance, Chiltern Firehouse, London, 2014.

The Homburg did make a mid-century comeback after it became the choice of the UK's pre-war foreign secretary Anthony Eden (1897-1977; UK prime-minister 1955-1957).  The highly strung Eden was the most stylish politician of the age, although his sartorial elegance failed to impress the Duce, Benito Mussolini (1883-1945; Duce (leader) & prime-minister of Italy 1922-1943) noting he had “…never met a better dressed fool.”  It was his colleague Rab Butler (1902–1982) who, noting the character of Eden's parents, reckoned genetics could explain why Eden was "half mad baronet, half beautiful woman" and he understood that something as distinctive as a hat could convey a political message if the association was widely understood.  At the time when the great dividing line in British politics was the appeasement policy of Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940; UK prime-minister 1937-1940), Eden was replaced as foreign secretary by the pro-appeasement Lord Halifax (1881–1959; UK Foreign Secretary 1938-1940), Butler becoming his under-secretary.  One thing an under-secretary gets allocated is a parliamentary private secretary (PPS), a member of parliament (MP) keen to stake a claim to advancement and on his first day in the Foreign Office (FO), Butler took the PPS to a quiet corner and told him to discard his homburg since it was "too Edenesque" and to "buy a bowler", the hat almost always worn by Halifax.  The PPS had no great regard for Eden and had adopted the homburg merely because he liked the look but anyway took the advice, delighted to be unexpectedly appointed a FO PPS, noting in his diary "...just think, bowlers are back".

Pale

Pale (pronounced peyl)

(1) Light-colored or lacking in color.

(2) Someone lacking their usual intensity of color due to fear, illness, stress etc.

(3) Not bright or brilliant; dim.

(4) Faint or feeble; lacking vigor (mostly archaic).

(5) To seem less important, significant, remarkable etc, especially when compared with something or someone else.

(6) A stake or picket, as of a fence.

(7) An enclosing or confining barrier; enclosure; a district or region within designated bounds; to encircle or encompass.

(8) Limits; bounds (now rare except if used figuratively in the phrase “beyond the pale”).

(9) In heraldry, an ordinary (band) in the form of a broad vertical stripe at the centre of an escutcheon.

(10) In shipbuilding, a shore used inside to support the deck beams of a hull under construction.

(11) In some of the dialectical English spoken in southern Africa, a euphemism for white.

1375-1400: From the Middle French Palle, from the twelfth century Old French paile & paleir (pale, light-colored (pâle in the Modern French)), from the Latin pallidus (pale, pallid, wan, colorless), from pallēre (be pale, grow pale) from the primitive Indo-European root pel- (pale) of which pallid is a doublet.  Pel was a significant root in many languages and productive, forming all or part of appall; falcon; fallow (in its adjectival sense), pallid, pallor, palomino, Peloponnesus, polio & poliomyelitis.  The linkages were many including the Sanskrit palitah (gray) & panduh (whitish, pale), the Greek pelios (livid, dark) & polios (gray (of hair, wolves, waves)), the Latin pallere (to be pale) & pallidus, the Old Church Slavonic plavu, the Lithuanian palvas (sallow), the Welsh llwyd (gray) and the Old English fealo & fealu (dull-colored, yellow, brown).  Pel also forms the root of words for "pigeon" in Greek (peleia), Latin (palumbes) and Old Prussian (poalis).

As an adjectival descriptor of color, it seems first, from the early fourteenth century to have been applied to human skin-tone and complexion to convey the sense of “whitish appearance, bloodless, pallid".  From the mid-fourteenth century it began to be used as a modifier to nuance the tones of colors in the sense of “lacking chromatic intensity, approaching white".  Late in the century, use was extended to non-human objects or substances (such as ales and other liquors) at which time it became also a frequent figurative form.  Paleface, is said to be a translation of a Native American word form noted in several dialects meaning "European"; attested from 1822 in American English, there are suggestions the tale may be apocryphal and a creation of the palefaces themselves.

The noun paling (stake, pole, stake for vines) was an early thirteenth century adoption of the circa 1200 Anglo Latin from the Old French pal and directly from the Latin palus (stake, prop, wooden post), source also of the Spanish and Italian palo, from the primitive Indo-European pakslo-, a suffixed form of the root pag- (to fasten) and a doublet of pole.  By the 1550s, the adjective form existed to refer to a fence made from palings, formed by connecting the pointed vertical stakes by horizontal rails above and below.

Romanian Vlad the Impaler postage stamp, 1976.

Paling is a word still used in fencing and impale is related.  In the 1520s, impale meant "to enclose with stakes, fence in", from the French empaler or directly from the Medieval Latin impalare (to push onto a stake).  The now better remembered sense "pierce with a pointed stake" (as torture or capital punishment) dates from circa 1610-1630.  In the popular imagination it’s associated especially with the Romanian Vlad the Impaler (Vlad III, circa 1430-circa 1477, thrice Voivode of Wallachia, 1448-Circa 1477).  One of his favorite methods of torture and execution (there’s often a bit of overlap in these matters) was said to be impalement but some of the more lurid tales of his cruelty may be from the imagination of the medieval mind though his rule is thought to have been severe.  Regardless, he remains a Romanian folk hero.

From the late fourteenth century paling came to refer to the constructed boundary as well as the components, understood generally to describe a "fence of pointed stakes", Paler as a surname meaning "fence-builder" being recorded from late twelfth century.  Another Middle English form of the word in the sense of "fence, paling, wall of an enclosure" sense, based on the plural, was the late fourteenth century pales or palis, the surname Paliser attested from early in the century.  Anthony Trollope (1815-1882) used the variant Palliser in his “parliamentary novels” (1864-1879) as the name for the repressed protagonist; Trollope took care with the selection of his character’s names.

Palisade (a fence of strong stakes), is attested from circa 1600 and was from the fifteenth century French palisade, from the Provençal palissada, from palissa (a stake or paling), from the Gallo-Roman palicea, from the Latin palus (stake) from the primitive Indo-European pakslo-.  The earlier Italian form was palisade, noted since the 1580s.  Palisades entered military jargon circa 1690 and described "close rows of strong pointed wooden stakes fixed in the ground as a defensive fortification", a use which remains a standard part of costal defenses against seaborn invasion.  The trap-rock precipices along the Hudson River opposite New York City were named The Palisades in 1823.  The word remains popular with property developers searching for a word with connotations of elevation and luxury.

Three images of a pale Lindsay Lohan.

In English, pale, pallid and wan imply an absence or faintness of color, especially when used to describe the human countenance.  Pale suggests a faintness or absence of color, which may be natural when applied to objects but when used to descript a human face usually means an unnatural and often temporary absence of color, as arising from sickness or sudden emotion.  Pallid, used almost exclusively to describe the human countenance, implies an excessive paleness induced by intense emotion, disease or death.  Wan implies a sickly paleness, usually as a consequence of illness.

The figurative sense of "limit, boundary, restriction" dates from circa 1400 and referenced the notion of "an enclosed space," hence "district or region within determined bounds" and later it meant "territory held by power of a nation or people".  The more modern idiomatic use, referring to the behavior of a person as “beyond the bounds of morality or social acceptability”, is not without critics but now so common it’s doubtless now the assumed meaning.  Using the phrase in the modern sense, in 2009, during one of their many squabbles, Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson (b 1941) said of his Liverpool counterpart, Rafael Benitez (b 1960), "…he's beyond the pale”.  It’s said they’ve not since made up.

The English Pale in Medieval Ireland (1450).

Catherine the Great (Catherine II, 1729–1796; reigning empress of Russia 1762-1796) created the cherta (postaoyannoy yewreskoy) osedlosti (Pale of Settlement) in Russia in 1791. This was the name given to the western border region of the country (modern-day Belarus & Moldova and parts of the Ukraine, Lithuania, Poland, Latvia and western Russia) in which Jews were allowed to live, the motive being to restrict trade between Jews and native Russians.  In a process something like COVID-19 travel exemptions, some Jews were allowed, as a concession, to live “beyond the pale”.  Pales had been enforced in other European countries for similar political reasons.  During the late Medieval period, the Pale (An Pháil in the Irish), often described as the English Pale (An Pháil Shasanach or An Ghalltacht), was that part of Ireland administered directly the English government and the Pale of Calais was formed by the French as early as 1360.

The first printed instance of the phrase is in John Harington's (1560-1612) lyric poem The History of Polindor and Flostella (1657).  In the verse Ortheris withdraws with his beloved to a country lodge for “quiet, calm and ease” but later they’re tempted to wander:

"Both Dove-like roved forth beyond the pale to planted Myrtle-walk".

Clearly it was conveyed no good comes from venturing beyond the pale for soon the lovers are set upon by attacked by armed robbers with “many a dire killing thrust”.