Skullduggery

Skullduggery (pronounced skuhl-duhg-uh-ree)

(1) Dishonorable proceedings; mean dishonesty or trickery.

(2) An instance of dishonest or deceitful behavior; trickery.

(3) Underhand dealing.

(4) As sculdudrie or sculduddery, illicit fornication or something obscene respectively (archaic Scots dialectial forms).

1856: A creation in US English, it was a variant of earlier Scots sculdudrie or sculduddery (both of obscure origin) which had been in use in colonial America.  In Scotland, sculdudrie originally meant “adultery” or “illicit fornication” and, with the unexplained spelling variation sculduddery, by 1821 the meaning had extended to a general sense of “bawdry, an obscenity".  By from the late nineteenth century, as skullduggery, in most of the English-speaking world, it came to refer to dishonest or deceitful behaviour.  Skulduggery is a noun; the noun plural is skulduggeries or skullduggeries.

Skulduggery is general underhanded behaviour or trickery, usually secret or devious. The noun plural is skulduggeries or skullduggeries, though both are rarely used in this form because the reference tends almost always to be to behaviour in a general sense to begin with.  Everybody except Tony Blair seems to understand the profession of politics is a venal business of lies and squalid skullduggery.  By the time of his valedictory address to the House of Commons, he’d managed to forget noble causes like New Labour’s “ethical foreign policy” which lasted only until it was explained to him that the UK’s armaments manufacturers realized great profits by selling weapons to regimes with appalling human rights records:   

"Some may belittle politics but we who are engaged in it know that it is where people stand tall.  Although I know that it has many harsh contentions, it is still the arena that sets the heart beating a little faster. If it is, on occasions, the place of low skullduggery, it is more often the place for the pursuit of noble causes. I wish everyone, friend or foe, well. That is that... the end."

Hansard: Tony Blair’s last official words as prime-minister.  Prime Minister's Questions, 27 June 2007.

Tony Blair, Gordon Blair & Peter Mandelson (left).  In the early 1990s, detesting the Major government, the press were fawning in their admiration and dubbed the trio "the three musketeers" but they're now usually thought of as "the good, the bad and the ugly, a collective moniker which may be generous to at least one of them.  There is no truth in the rumor the three politicians provided the template for the personalities of the "plastics" in Mean Girls (2004, right) although the idea is tempting, reading left to right (works for either photograph): Karen Smith (sincere, well meaning, a bit simple); Gretchen Wieners (insecure, desperately wanting to be liked) and Regina George (evil and manipulative).  

There was plenty of low skulduggery during the New Labour government, led first by Tony Blair (b 1953; UK prime-minister 1997-2007) and later by Gordon Brown (b 1951; UK prime-minister 2007-2010) but to get a good flavour of it it’s necessary to read the memoirs by them both, then the diaries of Alastair Campbell (b 1957; Labour Party apparatchik) and finally Peter Mandelson’s (b 1953; sometime member of the New Labour governments) The Third Man.  The books are best read in that order because it makes easiest the reading between the lines to work out why each included certain things and left out other stuff (or spun it in some strange and inevitably self-serving way.  It’s quite a fun process and actually necessary because while Campbell’s diaries are lively, the other three would otherwise be a hard slog.  It’s now sometimes forgotten that in the distant past of the post-Thatcher, early 1990s, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson were seen as modernizing reformers and in the early years of government actually behaved in a way which suggested that was true.  It didn’t last however and Brown soon became consumed with jealously and eventually hatred for Blair who was denying him the premiership to which he thought himself entitled.  Mandelson meanwhile became resentful at being twice dismissed from office by Blair one grounds he thought unreasonable.  From this ensued what was pretty dirty business.

A practical manual of low skulduggery in four volumes:

Tony Blair, A Journey (2010), Random House, pp 624, ISBN 978-0-09-192555-0

Gordon Brown, My Life, Our Times (2017), The Bodley Head, pp 512, ISBN 978-2-78-739526-6

Alastair Campbell, The Blair Years (2007), Random House, pp 816, ISBN 0-09-179629-6

Peter Mandelson, The Third Man (2010), Harper Press, pp 584, ISBN 978-0-00-739528-6

Corporal

Corporal (pronounced kawr-per-uhl or kaw-pruhl)

(1) Of the human body; bodily; physical

(2) In zoology, of the body proper, as distinguished from the head and limbs.

(3) As corporeal, belonging to the material world (mostly obsolete except for historic references although still used as a technical term in philosophy).

(4) In ecclesiastical accoutrements, a fine cloth, usually of linen, on which the consecrated elements are placed or with which they are covered during the Eucharist (also called the communion cloth).

(5) In Christian theology, as the seven Corporal Works of Mercy, the practical acts of compassion, as distinct from the seven Spiritual Works (the contemplative acts).

(6) In military use, a non-commissioned officer ranking above lance corporal (private first class (PFC) in US Army) and below a sergeant; in the Royal Navy, a petty officer who assists the master-at-arms; similar use in the armed services of many countries.

1350–1400: From the Middle English corporall, from the Anglo-French corporall, from the Latin corporālis (bodily, of the body) from corpus (body), the construct being corpor- (stem of corpuscorpus) + -ālis (the third-declension two-termination suffix (neuter -āle), used to form adjectives of relationship from nouns or numerals, from the primitive Indo-European -li-, which later dissimilated into an early version of -aris).  The use describing alter cloths was derived from the Medieval Latin corporāle pallium eucharistic (altar cloth) and replaced corporas, itself inherited from Classical Latin under the influence of Old French.  The pronunciation is kaw-pruhl in military use and kawr-per-uhl for all other purposes.  The adoption by the military dates from 1570–1580 but the origin is uncertain.  It may have come from the Old French (via Italian) into Middle French as a variant of caporal, from the Italian caporale, apparently a contraction of phrase capo corporale (corporal head) in the sense of the head of a body (of soldiers).  Source was the Latin caput (head), perhaps influenced also by the Old French corps (body (of men)).  Corporal is a noun & adjective, corporality, corporalcy & corporalship are nouns and corporally is an adverb; the noun plural is corporals.

The strategic corporal

The idea of the “strategic corporal” was first explained in a paper published in 1999 by USMC (US Marine Corps) General Charles Krulak (b 1942).  Based on both practical experience and his analysis of the likely evolution of conflicts into localized, small-scale but intense theatres of operation, he described what he called the “three block war” in which the Marines could be involved in conventional fire-fights, peacekeeping operations and humanitarian aid, all conduced in a geographical area no bigger than three city blocks and undertaken either sequentially or, more challengingly, simultaneously and in an environment in which hostile, friendly & neutral forces are intermeshed.  The reference to the “three city blocks” was included for didactic purposes to illustrate his point that the training of military personnel needed to be refined better to encompass those required to make independent decisions, including the non-commissioned officers (NCOs) & junior officers actually commanding small numbers of troops on the ground.  Just as the term “three blocks” wasn’t a literal limitation but a way of illustrating a change of mindset from the traditional focus on divisional & brigade level deployment, the phrase “strategic corporal” was chosen because in the military that is the lowest rank at which a soldier is in command of others and thus in a position to make decisions which could have some strategic significance.  Typically, a “strategic corporal” might be a lieutenant who in modern warfare, must be trained to make major decisions without the benefit of direction from the chain of command.

The concept has been influential in many militaries and has been compared with the idea of the “man on the ground” doctrine which emerged in the nineteenth century when the early technologies of long-distance communication meant that for the first time it was practical for military commanders in remote locations to seek and receive instructions from perhaps thousands of miles away.  It would however be decades before those interactions habitually became real-time so the idea of the “strategic corporal” would not then have been unfamiliar and there was an at least tacit acknowledgement that the man on the ground would often be the one making critical decisions rather than anyone in the high command or even the headquarters staff in theatre.  This could of course mean a bad decision could theoretically trigger a war but as "the Fashoda Incident" (1898 and the retrospective re-naming of what was at the time in Paris and London thought of as “the Fashoda Crisis”) illustrated, the man on the ground having the necessary background and training to make a decision based on factors beyond what was militarily possible could have far-reaching consequences.

So the idea of the strategic corporal is that training in such matters needs to extend to the layers of command where such decisions need to be made, not to the point at which formerly they’re delegated or devolved.  In a sense that of course is a mere recognition of reality but the elevation of the concept into a doctrine has been criticized as becoming “mythologized within the military culture [and] forever associated with negative consequences”, the result of the ultimate responsibility for decisions being seen through legal filters, leaders now too “…concerned with the perceived risk..” and as a means to manage that “…senior leaders have elevated decision authorities far away from anyone but themselves”.

Military analysts have noted that military operations conducted in the Gaza Strip provide the perfect example of a “three block war”, one that has the potential to unfold as a series of “three block” theatres.  In these urban environments in which a civilian population co-exists still in high-density with paramilitary forces and irregular combatants, decisions taken by a soldier in direct command of fewer than a dozen troops in the invading army can have a strategic significance well beyond the particular three blocks in which they’re operating.  Complicating this is the suspicion expressed by some that a high civilian death-toll is actually an outcome desired by the Hamas (Hamas the acronym of the Arabic  حركة المقاومة الإسلامية (Ḥarakah al-Muqāwamah al-ʾIslāmiyyah) (Islamic Resistance Movement); HMS glossed in the Hamas Covenant (1998) by the Arabic word ḥamās (حماس) (which translates variously as “strength”, “zeal” or “bravery”)).  The evidence to support this is strong in that the nature of the attack staged by the Hamas on Israeli civilians on 7 October 2023 was of such a nature that retaliation by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) would be bound to result in civilian causalities in Gaza; there are not effective alternative military tactics available, the choices being only to retaliate or not.

The idea used by Hamas is not new.  In 1942, the Czechoslovak government-in-exile (which in 1940 had shifted from Paris to London), had become especially disturbed by the success SS-Obergruppenführer (general) Reinhard Heydrich (1904–1942; head of the Reich Security Main Office 1939-1942) was enjoying as Deputy Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, a role in which he was effectively the Nazi’s “governor of Czechoslovak”.  Using the Nazi’s tradition method of governing conquered territories by “carrot & stick” Heydrich had not spared the stick early in his administration (1941-1942) but been remarkably successful with the inducements he offered and had achieved an unexpectedly high degree of cooperation with the local population.  With little signs of an effective resistance movement operating, the government in exile took the decision, in cooperation with the British Special Operations Executive (SOE), to send an assassination squad to Prague, knowing full well the retribution against the population would be severe but the object was to use that to stimulate local resistance.  More than a thousand Czechs were killed in revenge for Heydrich’s death.

So in the awful business of war, civilian deaths can be thought of as useful political devices, something which in Islamic theology is regarded as the noble sacrifice of martyrdom.  The Hamas, having concluded (not unreasonably) that 75 years on, the leaders of many Arab states had tired of the Palestinian “problem” and were moving on, regarding the Jewish state as a permanent part of the region’s political geography with the advantages of détente greater than those of conflict, needed to be back on the agenda.  The Hamas understand a resort to diplomacy is unlikely much to influence the Arab rulers but the spilling of Muslim blood at the hands of the IDF will bring protest to the streets in the region and beyond.  This of course makes inevitable that when the strategic corporals proceed, however cautiously, through the rubble of Gaza’s blocks, they’ll be encouraged by their opponents to make decisions and these decisions can have consequences which ripple far and perhaps for a generation.  What one strategic corporal decides to do really does matter.  By comparison, most of the statements and resolutions, issued or passed by politicians, ex-politicians and other worthies around the planet will be noted with equal interest by those in Tel Aviv, the Hamas to the south, the Hezbollah to the north, the Ayatollahs to the east and the fish to the west.

Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy

The Bible reduces the New Testament’s conception of mercy to seven practical (corporal) and seven spiritual (contemplative) acts, each said to be a virtue influencing one's will to have compassion for, and, if possible, ameliorate another's misfortune.  Italian Dominican friar & philosopher Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) thought that although mercy is, as it were, the spontaneous product of charity, it must be thought a special virtue adequately distinguishable from its effects.  Later theologians noted its motive is the misery which one discerns in another, particularly in so far as this condition is deemed to be, in some sense at least, involuntary but even if not, the necessity is to offer succor of either body or soul.

Corporal works of mercy

To feed the hungry
To give drink to the thirsty
To clothe the naked
To harbor the harborless
To visit the sick
To ransom the captive
To bury the dead

Spiritual works of mercy

To instruct the ignorant
To admonish sinners
To bear wrongs patiently
To forgive offences willingly
To comfort the afflicted
To pray for the living and the dead
To counsel the doubtful

The Gospel of Matthew (Matthew 25:34-41) makes clear those who offer mercy “…are righteous and their souls will be granted eternal life…” whereas those who do not “…shall be cursed, cast into everlasting fire and given over to the devil.”

34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:

35 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:

36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

***

41 Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:

42 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:

43 I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.

46 And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.

Tony Abbott (b 1957; Australian prime-minister 2013-2015) visited Cardinal George Pell (1941-2023) in prison (a corporal work of mercy).  In this act, come Judgement Day, he will be found to have acted righteously.

Pope Francis (b 1936; pope since 2013) didn't visit Cardinal Pell in prison but did remember him in his prayers (a spiritual work of mercy).  In this act, come Judgement Day, he will be found to have acted righteously.  Within the Roman Curia (a place of Masonic-like plotting & intrigue and much low skulduggery), Cardinal Pell's nickname was “Pell Pot”, an allusion to Pol Pot (1925–1998, dictator of communist Cambodia 1976-1979) who announced the start of his regime was “Year Zero” and all existing culture and tradition must completely be destroyed and replaced.

Lindsay Lohan 6126 wool blend military coat in black.

Military uniforms have long influenced fashion and in the 1960s, the counter culture adopted them with some sense of irony.  Camouflage patterns have always been popular but the dress uniforms are also used as a model, the insignia, sometimes in elaborated form added as embellishments.  The insignia of a corporal is a two-bar chevron, depicted variously upwards or downwards, depending on the service.

Pell

Pell (pronounced pel)

(1) An animal skin, fur or hide.

(2) A lined cloak or its lining.

(3) A roll of parchment; a record kept on parchment.

(4) As a Sussex dialectical form, a body of water somewhere between a pond and a lake in size.

(5) An upright post, often padded and covered in hide, used to practice strikes with bladed weapons such as swords or glaives.

(6) As Pell Office, a department of the English Exchequer (abolished in 1834).

Mid 1300s: From the Middle English pel (skin, hide), a roll of parchment, from the Anglo-French pell and the Old French pel (skin, hide (which by the thirteenth century it had evolved into peau which endures in Modern French)), from the Latin pellem & pellis (skin, leather, parchment, hide), from the Proto-Italic pelnis, from the primitive Indo-European pel- (skin, hide (also to cover, wrap; skin, hide; cloth)), the source of the modern pelt and distantly related to fell and film.  It was cognate with the Welsh pell (far), from the primitive Indo-European kwel and in Welsh, the plural was pell, the equative pelled, the comparative pellach and the superlative pellaf.  In the modern age, a frequently used derivation is rheolydd pell (remote control).  Pell is a noun, verb & adjective; the noun plural is pells.  The present participle is pelling, the past participle pelled.

Before the internet made memes the preferred transport layer for just about any fragment of information, Ms Gemma Pell would probably have gone through life mostly untroubled by the cross-language phonetic coincidence in her name.  As it was she became a meme.  In French, Je m'appelle (pronounced "gem apell") means literally “I call myself” and translates as "My name is".

And that’s how the troubles started.

Pell-mell (confusedly; in an impetuous rush; with indiscriminate violence, energy, or eagerness) dates from the 1570s and was from the French pêle-mêle, from the twelfth century Old French pesle mesle, thought to be a jingling rhyme on the second element, which is from the stem of the verb mesler (to mix, to mingle".  The earliest known form in English was the phonetic borrowing from the French as “pelly melly”.  The primitive Indo-European root pel- (skin, hide) was a significant and productive pre-modern word, reflecting the importance of hides and skins in the economies of all societies, being related to fell (skin or hide of an animal), the Old English filmen (membrane, thin skin, foreskin),  pellagra (a disease characterised by skin lesions and mental confusion), pellicle (a thin skin or surface film), film (a thin layer of some substance; a pellicle; a membranous covering, causing opacity), pelt (skin of a fur-bearing animal), pillion (a pad behind the saddle of a horse for a second rider) & surplice (a thin, liturgical vestment of the Christian Church).

Cardinal George Pell (1941-2023) in ecclesiastical regalia.  This was an exhibit introduced by the cardinal counsel to support the defence that the allegations against him were (as described) technically impossible (in the place and within the time alleged) because of the cut of the garments.  Within the Roman Curia (a place of Masonic-like plotting & intrigue and much low skulduggery), Cardinal Pell's nickname was “Pell Pot”, an allusion to Pol Pot (1925–1998, dictator of communist Cambodia 1976-1979) who announced the start of his regime was “Year Zero” and all existing culture and tradition must completely be destroyed and replaced. 

The origin of the surname Pell was metonymic occupational name for a dealer in furs, from the Middle English & Old French pel (skin, hide), a similar use to the Germanic forms Pelle & Pfell, the South German spellings from the Middle High German phellee & phelle (purple silk cloth).  In parallel, in England and Flanders, the surname Pell emerged as a pet form of Peter, a biblical name much admired by twelfth century Christian Crusaders and associated with the claim of St Peter, the founder of the Christian church, the name from the Ancient Greek word petrus (rock).  Because there was much commercial and population exchange between Flanders and England, Pell was also adopted as a surname in the former.  Even more so than in England, Flemish surnames were characterized by many variations in spelling and one reason for this was there were no real spelling rules in Medieval English.  Spellings were influenced by official court languages (Latin & French) and there was little consistency, changes happening between the efforts of one scribe and the next.  Names were recorded as they sounded so even the differences in pronunciation between one official or priest and another could induce differences and it wasn’t uncommon for people to have had their names registered in several different forms throughout their lives, something which makes difficult the work of genealogical researchers in the modern era.  Even within English, the variations were legion but there was a linguistic uniqueness among Flemish settlers in England, who spoke a language closely related to Dutch, meaning the pronunciation passed through another unfamiliar filter and anglicization was common, whole syllables sometimes deleted.  Pell has been spelled Pell, Pelle, Pel, Pels, Pells, Pelles & Pelf.

Cardinal Pell with Benedict XVI (1927–2022; pope 2005-2013, pope emeritus 2013-2022) and former Dr Kevin Rudd (b 1957; Australian prime-minister 2007-2010 & 2013).

In England, dating from the mid-fourteenth century, the Exchequer’s Pell Office was a department in which the receipts and payments were entered upon two rolls of parchment, the one called the introitta, which was the record of monies received, and the other the exitus, or the record of monies issued (ie credit & debit).  The office gained its name from the ledger entries being made in ink upon rolls called pells, from the Latin pellis (skin, leather, parchment, hide) which, while not exactly the blockchain of their day, represented a considerable advance in accuracy and reliability than the distributed and haphazard methods of the past and functionally similar institutions were established in Scotland and Ireland.  In the sixteenth century the pells (the parchment rolls) were replaced by books but the office retained its name until its abolition in 1834.  The lists of the name of holders of the office of Clerks of the Pells in the Exchequer read like something of a tale of English political corruption and nepotism.

Cardinal Pell makes a point.

The death at 81 of Australian Cardinal George Pell was announced by the Holy See on Tuesday 10 January 2023; he died after complications following “routine hip surgery”.  Created a cardinal in 2003, he was appointed the Vatican’s inaugural Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy (2014-2019 (effectively the treasurer or finance minister)), having earlier served as Archbishop of Melbourne and later Sydney.  Although a player of real significance in the culture wars and later among the factions of the Vatican’s labyrinthine bureaucracy, the cardinal came to international attention when in 2018 he was convicted in the Supreme Court of Victoria on five charges of child sexual abuse, perpetrated against two boys of thirteen in a Cathedral a quarter-century earlier.  Sentenced to prison, the cardinal was the most senior Church figure ever jailed for such offences.  The conviction was upheld in a majority judgement (2-1) of the Victorian court of appeal but was in 2020 quashed in a unanimous (7-0) ruling by the High Court of Australia (HCA).  The cardinal served 13 months in prison.

Cardinal Pell accompanying to court laicised (defrocked) Roman Catholic priest and convicted child sex offender Gerald Ridsdale (1934-2025). Ridsdale died in prison while serving a 36 year sentence, technically still a priest because, as a matter of canon law, an ordination cannot be annulled.  Thus, while barred from undertaking most clerical rituals and functions, Ridsdale, convicted of some 70 sex-offences (including rape) against children could still have been called upon to perform the last rites for someone thought close to death "if no other priest was available".  

As a general principle, actions in law against a person die with them but what remained afoot was a civil suit, launched by the father of a choirboy who prosecutors alleged Cardinal Pell abused.  The action was able to proceeding because it was lodged against both the late cardinal and the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne, something now possible because the old arrangement, under which the Catholic Church could not be sued (because at law it had no more status than the local bridge club), has been reformed.  It was of great interest because while the HCA quashed Pell’s criminal conviction because the Crown had not proven he was guilty (of that with which he was charged on the in the place and at the time alleged) “beyond reasonable doubt”, in civil proceedings, the standard to establish guilt is the less onerous “on the balance of probabilities”.  It was thus a matter analogous with the civil trial of football star OJ Simpson (1947-2024) which followed his acquittal on murder charges; in the civil trial, the court found against Simpson and awarded the plaintiffs US$33.5 million for his victims' wrongful deaths.  In Australia, the plaintiff sought unspecified damages for the mental injury he alleged he suffered after learning of the allegations against Pell, specifically compensation for "nervous shock" he endured as a result of losing his son and learning about the allegations a year later.  The term “nervous shock” is a creature of law with its own history of precedents and tests and describes a recognised mental disorder, injury or illness caused by the actions or omissions of another party and is not always entirely aligned with the term as used in medicine or psychiatry.  Because it’s now possible to sue the Catholic Church as an entity, in his statement of claim, the plaintiff argued the church was liable as it breached its duty of care.  That would have represented progress for many alleging they were victims of clerical child abuse because it seemed to allow a church to be pursued on the grounds of vicarious liability.

Cardinal Pell with former Archbishop of Melbourne Sir Frank Little (1925–2008), found by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse to have led a culture of secrecy in the Melbourne archdiocese designed to hide complaints against priests and protect the church's reputation from scandal and financial liability.

Given the extraordinary volume of child abuse cases involving Roman Catholic clergy, the case was watched with interest, not least because of the findings of the earlier Royal Commission into Institutional Child Abuse (which ran for several years), interviewed thousands and found Pell had known of child sexual abuse by priests in Australia as early as the 1970s but failed to take action.  Pell rejected the commission’s findings, insisting they were "not supported by evidence".  That interplay of findings and other histories meant the case assumed greater significance because of the argument the church should be liable for the wrongdoings of its priests and bishops under the doctrine of vicarious liability.  There are defences to that but given recent developments there was hope it migh be applicable but but in 2025 the HCA ruled priests and such are not employees of the church, despite the appearance and perception by just about everyone except the Roman Curia and the judges of the HCA.  What this means is the legal avenue of vicarious liability effectively is closed because except in a narrow range of circumstances,  a church can't be held liable for the conduct of its (non-employed) clerics.  

Cardinal Pell and Tony Abbott, in church, discussing something.

Still, in death the late cardinal had his loyal defenders.  Tony Abbott (b 1957; Australian prime-minister 2013-2015), a lay-Catholic who in his youth trained for several years for the priesthood (a background which would later, among his parliamentary colleagues on both sides of the aisle, gained for him the moniker “the mad monk”) eulogized Pell as a “saint for our times” and “an inspiration for the ages”, damning the charges he’d faced as “a modern form of crucifixion”.  Time will tell if some pope might take up Mr Abbott’s hint and begin the process to create another Saint George (all would probably agree just now might be “too soon”) but the flourish “modern form of crucifixion” displayed a flair with words Mr Abbott but seldom managed during his years in office.

Traduce

Traduce (pronounced truh-doos or truh-dyoos)

(1) To malign a person or entity by making malicious and/or false or defamatory statements; slander; libel; defame.

(2) To pass on (to one's children, future generations etc.); to transmit (archaic).

(3) To pass into another form of expression; to rephrase, to translate (archaic).

1525–1535: From the Latin trādūcō (lead as a spectacle, dishonor), from trādūcere (to lead over, transmit, disgrace), a variant of trānsdūcere (to transfer, display, expose), the construct being tra- (from the preposition trāns (through, across, beyond)) + dūcere (to lead).  Synonyms include vilify, decry & disparage.  The Latin trādūcere was from the Proto-Italic tranzdoukō and cognates included the Italian tradurre and the French traduire.  The noun transduction (act of leading or carrying over) is from the 1650s, from the Latin transductionem & traducionem (nominative transductio) (a removal, transfer), noun of action from the past-participle stem of transducere & traducere (change over, convert) which also picked up the meaning "lead in parade, make a show of, dishonor, disgrace".  Traduce, traduction, traduced & traducing are verbs, traducement & traducer are nouns, traducingly is an adverb and traducible is an adjective; the most common noun plural is traducements.

To be traduced in speech or in writing (historically treated in English (and related) legal systems respectively as libel and slander but some systems have reformed their rules and now treat all as just the single concept of defamation) can allow the victim to seek redress through legal process, the available remedies including retractions, apologies and damages by way of financial compensation.  Also available is the injunction to prevent publication and what has become popular in some jurisdictions in the (secret) secret injunction, a device whereby (1) publication is denied, (2) all details of the matter (names of the parties or even an allusion to the nature of the proscribed material) and (3) the very fact any injunction has been granted is kept secret.

Mostly a thing of civil law, in some jurisdictions there’s still the offence of criminal defamation but its very existence is now less common and use seldom.  Criminal defamation exists when someone publishes defamatory material knowing it is, or not caring if it is, false with the intention to, or not having regard to whether it will, cause serious harm to the victim or any other person is guilty of a crime.  In most cases, the same defenses available in a civil action can be used in a criminal matter; a criminal charge does not preclude civil action being taken for the same publication.  The matter of truth is interesting.  In the United States, truth is an absolute defense to an action for defamation.  As many have found out, that doesn’t mean there aren’t in the US consequences for publishing something defamatory but the action taken will not be on grounds of libel or slander.  Although it seems strange to many, truth isn’t an absolute defense in many jurisdictions but it can be a matter raised in mitigation so that even if a judgment is delivered against a defendant, the damages awarded may be nominal.

Publish and be damned

Although there’s always been a suspicion a ghost writer may have helped a bit in matters of style, the content of Harriette Wilson’s (1786–1845) book The Memoirs of Harriette Wilson: Written by Herself was all her own.  First published in 1825, it was a best seller and thought topical enough to deserve a re-print a century later, it’s notable still for having one of the finest opening lines of any auto-biography ever published:

"I shall not say how and why I became, at the age of fifteen, the mistress of the Earl of Craven."

The cover of some of the French editions were more alluring than those sold in England.

However much the tales of Regency’s most revealing courtesan may have delighted readers, there was one not so happy.  In the mail one morning in December 1824, Arthur Wellesley (1st Duke of Wellington; 1769–1852, UK prime-minister 1828-1830) the famous soldier who led the coalition of armies which defeated Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821; leader of the French Republic 1799-1804 & Emperor of the French from 1804-1814 & 1815) at Waterloo in 1815, found a letter from the publisher John Joseph Stockdale (circa 1775-1847) which can’t have been pleasant reading.  Stockdale was attempting blackmail, advising the duke he was about to publish Miss Wilson’s revelations which contained “various anecdotes” of Wellington which “it would be most desirable to withhold” and that could be arranged were payment to be made.

Duke of Wellington (1816) by Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830).

The duke's response was the famous “Publish and be damned!” reputedly scrawled across Stockdale’s letter and sent to him by return mail.  Publish Stockdale did, the book, a romp through the beds of the aristocracy appearing by installments before appearing in bookshops where it scandalized and thrilled London society although it would have been more salacious still had more of Stockdale’s blackmail victims had the fortitude of the iron duke and refused to pay.  An instant best-seller, the book went through thirty-one printings in a year and pirated copies were on-sale all over the continent but even without revenue from overseas sales the book was lucrative although the Stockdale was soon ruined by libel suits from those whose reputations had been traduced and Miss Wilson would eventually die in obscurity.

Riveting reading it may have been but so many of the libel actions against Stockdale were able to succeed in English courts because of the many errors of detail and chronology but historians nevertheless agree the narrative is substantially a reliable track of Miss Wilson’s adventures even if the sequence of events is sometimes misleading; to be fair, she had so many affairs it would be churlish not to allow for a little vagueness of recollection, one man presumably much the same as another after a while.  Whether “Publish and be damned!” in the duke’s own hand was ever written across the letter and sent back has never been confirmed because the original apparently hasn’t survived but there’s enough evidence from contemporaries to leave no doubt he certainly spoke the words but whatever she wrote of her time with Wellington, it must have been sufficiently truthful to convince the duke not to issue a writ for libel, despite at the time having threatened to sue “...if such rubbish is published”.

His marriage was already unhappy and the disclosures probably little surprised the duchess and the union endured until her death while the book clearly did no lasting harm to the duke's public reputation, the hero of Waterloo afforded some latitude in pre-Victorian England.  Within a decade of publication he would be prime minister and when he died in 1852, he was again a national hero and granted a state funeral, a rare distinction in England, unlike Australia where they’re given to reasonably successful football coaches and television personalities.  The phrase “Publish and be damned!” entered the language and was in 1953 used as the title of a book detailing the history of the Daily Mirror newspaper, a tabloid which once had its own interesting history.

To keep track of one's traductions, it's recommended a burn book be maintained.  Introduced to the world in Mean Girls (2004), "burn" in this context was used in the sense of "an insult, a disparaging statement" and, depending on one's motives, a burn book can either focus exclusively on one individual worthy of being burned (eg crooked Hillary Clinton) or be devoted to a villainous group (eg the Republican Party).  One of the attractions of a burn book is that nothing, however scurrilous, need be verified and heresy evidence is admissible (indeed it's probably obligatory).  Thus, accusations against someone of stuff like voting Tory, belonging to the Freemasons, enjoying sexual relations with certain vegetables & fruits (all three perhaps not unrelated), substance abuse or hoarding all belong in a burn book and, if selectively and anonymously leaked, reputations will be traduced.  The other utility a burn book offers is that nothing gets forgotten however great the volume, an important point for any traducer who likely will find someone like crooked Hillary will attract hundreds of entries.  Surely, Harriette Wilson kept a burn book.

Politicians do maintain burn books although few are much discussed.  Richard Nixon's (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974) "enemies list" became famous in 1973 when it emerged during congressional hearings enquiring into the Watergate break-in and that such a list existed surprised few although some did expect it to contain more names than the twenty included; it was common knowledge Nixon had many more enemies than that.  That view was vindicated when later lists were revealed (some containing hundreds of names) though had the net been cast a little wider, it could well have run to thousands.  At least one Eurocrat has also admitted to keeping a burn book although Jean-Claude Juncker (b 1954; president of the European Commission 2014-2019) calls his "little black book" Le Petit Maurice (little Maurice), the name apparently a reference to a contemporary from his school days who grew taller than the youthful Jean-Claude and seldom neglected to mention it.  Although maintained for some thirty years (including the eighteen spent as prime-minister of Luxembourg) to record the identities of those who crossed him, Mr Junker noted with some satisfaction it wasn't all that full because people “rarely betray me”, adding “I am not vengeful, but I have a good memory.”   It seems his warning “Be careful.  Little Maurice is waiting for you” was sufficient to ward of the betrayal and low skulduggery for which the corridors of EU institutions are renowned.

Font

Font (pronounced font)

(1) In Christianity, a receptacle, usually of stone, as in a baptistery or church, containing the holy water used in baptism (now usually as "fount").

(2) A receptacle for holy water; a stoup (now usually as "fount") .

(3) A productive source (often in the form “a fount of wisdom”).

(4) The reservoir for the oil in a lamp, ink for a pen etc (now usually as "fount").

(5) Figuratively, a spring or fountain; a wellspring (archaic but still appears in poetic & literary use as both "font" & "fount").

(6) In the slang of television production, to overlay text onto the picture.

(7) In typography, a set of glyphs of unified design, belonging to one typeface, style & weight and usually representing the letters of an alphabet, supplementary characters, punctuation marks and the ten standard numerals.

(8) In phototypesetting, a set of patterns forming glyphs of any size, or the film they are stored on.

(9) In digital typesetting, a set of glyphs in a single style, representing one or more alphabets or writing systems, or the computer code representing it.

(10) In computing, a file containing the code used to draw and compose the glyphs of one or more typographic fonts on a display or printer.

Pre 1000: From the Middle English font, from the Old English font & fant, from the Latin font-, the stem of the Church Latin fons baptismalis (baptismal font, spring, fountain) from the Classical Latin fōns (genitive fontis) (fountain).  The use in printing to describe typefaces dates from the 1570s and was from the Old & Middle French fonte (a founding, casting), the feminine past participle of the verb fondre (to melt), from the unattested Vulgar Latin funditus (a pouring, molding, casting), a verbal noun from the Latin fundere (past participle fusus) (to pour a melted substance) from a nasalized form of the primitive Indo-European root gheu- (to pour).  The meaning was acquired because all the characters in a set were cast at the same time.  Most people use the words font and typeface as synonyms but industry professionals maintain a distinction: the typeface is the set of characters of the same design; the font is the physical means of producing them; that difference was maintained even as printing moved from physical wood & metal to electronics.  The modern practice is for the spelling “font” to apply to use in printing while “fount” is use for receptacles containing liquids.  That must seem strange to those learning the language but it’s how things evolved.  Font is a noun & verb, fonted is a verb & adjective, fonting is a verb and fontal is an adjective; the noun plural is fonts.

The politics of fonts

Great moments in fonts: Always select your font with care.

Dr Stephen Banham (b 1968) is a senior lecturer in typography at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia who has published widely on the subject.  He recently discussed the politics of fonts and offered a number of examples of how fonts have played some significant role in recent history.  He noted the way in which some developments in typefaces have been technologically deterministic, something related not only to the changes in the mechanical devices used in printing (such as the shift from wooden to metal type) but also the speed at which people travelled while reading.  When the development of railways meant people began regularly to travel at speeds beyond that which teams of horses could attain, it meant there was signage which had to be legible to those passing on the train and this was not always simply a matter of scaling-up the existing styles; sometimes new designs were needed with different aspect ratios.

Fonts in transition: Nazi Party poster advertising a “Freedoms Rally” (the irony not apparent at the time), Schneidemuhl, Germany, (now Pila, Poland) in 1931 (left), Edict issued by Martin Bormann (1900–1945) banning the future use of Judenlettern (Jewish fonts) like Fraktur (the irony of the letterhead being in the now banned typeface presumably didn’t disturb the author) (centre) and (in modern Roman script), an announcement in occupied that 100 Polish hostages had been executed as a reprisal for death of two Germans in Warsaw, 1944 (right).

Sometimes too, the message was the typeface itself; it imparted values that were separate from the specific meaning in the text.  The Nazi regime (1933-1945) in Germany was always conscious of spectacle and although in matters of such as architecture customs there was a surprising tolerance of regional difference, in some things it demanded uniformity and one of those was the appearance of official documents.  Early in his rule their rule, Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader), German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) decreed that “German Black Letter” should be used for all official purposes (and it was used in the cover art of most early editions of Mein Kampf); Hitler, who to the end thought himself an “artist”, liked the heavy, angular form for its encapsulation of the Germanic.  Fraktur is probably the best known of these although it’s but one of a number of variations of the typeface and such was the extend of the state support for the font that the party was critical of newspapers, publishers & magazines which used more modern (and easier to read) forms (and they were used by the German military and civil service when legibility was important), a frequent criticism being the “Roman characters” somehow represented a “Jewish influence”.  In one of the ironies of history however, when it became apparent that when used in letters and notices distributed to enforce rule in the occupied territories the use of the font was counter-productive because it was so hard to read, the Nazis suddenly declared that Fraktur had become contaminated wand was thus proscribed as Judenlettern (Jewish letters), official documents thereafter rendered in modern Roman type.  Martin Bormann's edict was issued thus:

I announce the following, by order of the Führer:

It is false to regard the so-called Gothic typeface as a German typeface. In reality, the so-called Gothic typeface consists of Schwabacher-Jewish letters. Just as they later came to own the newspapers, the Jews living in Germany also owned the printing presses… and thus came about the common use in Germany of Schwabacher-Jewish letters.

Today the Führer… decided that Antiqua type is to be regarded as the standard typeface. Over time, all printed matter should be converted to this standard typeface. This will occur as soon as possible in regard to school textbooks, only the standard script will be taught in village and primary schools. The use of Schwabacher-Jewish letters by authorities will in future cease. Certificates of appointment for officials, street signs and the like will in future only be produced in standard lettering…

In the post war years, fonts (the word had come by them to be used generically of typefaces except by printers) reflected the mood of the times and in the unexpectedly buoyant years of the 1950s there emerged in West Germany (the FRG) “Optima”, (1958) intended to convey the optimism engendered by the Wirtschaftswunder (the economic miracle) while in France, “Univers” (1957), the product of a Swiss designer, was in a similar vein and intended to be suitable for all purposes in all languages.  Doubtlessly though, no font compares with the Swiss "Helvetica" (1957) which, by virtue of its elegance, simplicity & adaptability, quickly enjoyed a popularity which endures to this day and it remains the only font which has been the subject of a full-length feature film.  It spawned a number of imitators, especially after it was included in Adobe’s PostScript set, the best known of which is probably the ubiquitous Arial (1982).  The optimism of the 1950s is long gone although Optima remains available and names still reflect something of the concerns of their era: “Exocet” (1981), “Stealth” (1983) and “Patriot” (1986) all part of the late Cold War Zeitgeist.  Fonts can also reflect environment concerns and there are now some which no longer use solid forms, instead being made of lines, thereby reducing the consumption of ink or toner by up to 12%.  The trick isn’t detectable by the naked eye and is actually not new, “outline” typefaces long available although in those the technique was designed to be apparent and there were limitations in their application; below a certain size they tended to fragment.

More great moments in fonts.

During the Covid-19 pandemic when we were all spend much time in a form of house arrest, the font download sites all noted a spike in demand for script-like fonts, especially those which most resembled handwriting (and it is possible to have one’s own handwriting rendered as a font), the demand presumed to be induced by a longing for a way to express feelings in a more “human” way than the default serif and san serif sets which ship with email and messenger services.  That over arching binary (serif & san serif) has also attracted criticism because humanity’s most obvious binary (male & female) in now under siege as a form of oppression so binaries in general seem no longer fashionable.  With fonts, the most obvious micro-aggression is the way fonts are often categorized as “masculine” (Arial; Verdana etc) and “feminine” (Brush Script; Comic Sans (maybe in fuchsia) etc) and though the relevant characteristics can’t exactly be defined (except for the fuchsia), the differences probably can be recognized although that of course is a product of the prejudices and suppositions of the observer.  Presumably, if offered a third category (gender-neutral), a sample group would put some fonts in there but even that would seem based on the prejudices and suppositions constructed by the original binary.  The mechanics (as opposed to the content) of typology is one of the less expected theatres of the culture wars.

Verzoening, Geffen, the Netherlands.

The simultaneously derided yet still popular font Comic Sans (1984) has been more controversial than most.  The design was intended to recall the sort of writing which appeared in the speech bubbles of cartoons and it first came to wide public attention in 1995 when it was used in Microsoft Bob, the software which was an attempt to use a cartoon-like interface to make navigating Windows 95 easier for neophytes.  Even less popular than Windows Me, Windows Vista or DOS 4.0, Bob was allowed quietly to die but Comic Sans survived and found a niche, much to the disgust of some in major corporations who banned its use, demanding the staff use only “dignified” or “serious” (presumably masculine) fonts rather than something from a comic book.  Unfortunately, this news appeared not to reach whoever it was in the Netherlands who in 2012 approved the use of Comic Sans on the World War II memorial Verzoening (Reconciliation) erected in the town of Geffen.  That attracted much criticism but not as much as the decision to have the names of Jewish, Allied and German military deaths all to be etched (in Comic Sans) on the same stone.  After it was pointed out that reconciliation with the SS was not a national sentiment, the offending names were removed although for the rest, Comic Sans remained, albeit modified by the stonemasons so the text was rendered thicker, the local authorities justifying the retention on the grounds the shape of the text was in accord with the stone (it’s difficult to see the connection) and easily legible at a distance (certainly true).  It may be the only monument in the world, dedicated to the dead, which uses Comic Sans.

Crooked Hillary Clinton updating her Burn Book which, during the primary campaign for the Democrat Party nomination for the 2016 presidential election, probably would have been referred to internally as her "Bern Book" because it would have been so filled with tactics designed to sabotage the campaign of Bernie Sanders (b 1941; senior US senator (Independent, Vermont) since 2007) (digitally altered image).  In Mean Girls (2004), the Burn Book's cover used the "ransom note" technique which involved physically cutting letters from newspapers & magazines and pasting them onto a page, a trick of the pre-DNA analysis age which left no identifiable handwriting.  There are a number of "ransom" fonts which emulate the appearance in software.

Politicians do maintain burn books although few are much discussed.  Richard Nixon's (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974) "enemies list" became famous in 1973 when it emerged during congressional hearings enquiring into the Watergate break-in and that such a list existed surprised few although some did expect it to contain more names than the twenty included; it was common knowledge Nixon had many more enemies than that.  That view was vindicated when later lists were revealed (some containing hundreds of names) though had the net been cast a little wider, it could well have run to thousands.  At least one Eurocrat has also admitted to keeping a burn book although Jean-Claude Juncker (b 1954; president of the European Commission 2014-2019) calls his "little black book" Le Petit Maurice (little Maurice), the name apparently a reference to a contemporary from his school days who grew taller than the youthful Jean-Claude and seldom neglected to mention it.  Although maintained for some thirty years (including the eighteen spent as prime-minister of Luxembourg) to record the identities of those who crossed him, Mr Junker noted with some satisfaction it wasn't all that full because people “rarely betray me”, adding “I am not vengeful, but I have a good memory.”   It seems his warning “Be careful.  Little Maurice is waiting for you” was sufficient to ward of the betrayal and low skulduggery for which the corridors of EU institutions are renowned.