Spinster

Spinster (pronounced spin-sta (U) or spin-ster (non-U))

(1) A woman still unmarried beyond the usual age (according to the usual social conventions) of marrying.  Except when used historically, spinster has long been thought offensive or at least disparaging.

(2) In law (and still used in some jurisdictions), a woman who has never married.

(3) A person (historically always a woman) whose occupation is the spinning of threads (archaic).

(4) A jocular slang variation of the more common a spin doctor, spin merchant or spin master (one who spins (puts a spin on) a political media story so as to lend a favorable or advantageous appearance.

(5) A woman of evil character who has committed evil deeds, so called from being forced to spin in a house of correction (obsolete).

(6) A spider; an insect (such as a silkworm) which spins thread (a rare, dialectal form).

1325–1375: The construct was spin + -ster.  From the Middle English spynnester & spinnestere (a woman who spins fibre).  The early form combined the Middle English spinnen (spin fibers into thread) with -stere, the Middle English feminine suffix from the Old English -istre, from the Proto-Germanic -istrijon, the feminine agent suffix used as the equivalent of the masculine –ere.  It was used in Middle English also to form nouns of action (meaning "a person who ...") without regard for gender, a use now common in casual adaptations.  Spinster came to be used to describe spinners of both sexes which clearly upset some because by 1640 a double-feminine form had emerged: spinstress (a female spinner) which, 1716 also was being used for "a maiden lady".  Spinster, spinsterishness, spinsterism, spinsterism, spinsterdom, spinstership and spinsterhood are nouns and spinsterish, spinsterly, spinsterlike & spinsteresque are adjectives; the noun plural is spinsters.

The unmarried Lindsay Lohan who would probably have been described as a bachelorette, "Heart Truth Red Dress", Fall 2006 fashion show, Olympus Fashion Week, Manhattan, February 2006.

How prevalent the practice actually was is impossible to say because of the paucity of social histories of most classes prior to the modern age but the public attitude was said to be that unmarried women were supposed to occupy themselves with spinning.  This spread to common law through that typically English filter, the class system.  So precisely was the status of the spinster defined that the cut-off point was actually where one’s father sat in the order of precedence, a spinster "the legal designation in England of all unmarried women from a viscount's daughter downward".  Thus a woman’s father had be on the third rung of the peerage to avoid spinsterhood and that meant to avoid the fate the options were either marriage or to secure him an upward notch (from viscount to earl).  The use in English legal documents lasted from the seventeen until well into the twentieth century and, by 1719, had become the standard term for a "woman still unmarried and beyond the usual age at which it was expected".

A metallic wood-boring beetle (left) and a thornback ray (right).

One alternative to spinster which still shows up in the odd literary novel was the Italian zitella (an older unmarried woman).  Zitella was the feminine form of zitello (an older, unmarried man), which was from zito (a young, unmarried man), from the Neapolitan or Sicilian zitu, both probably related to the Vulgar Latin pittitus (small, worthless).  The feminine form of zito was zita (young unmarried woman) and both in southern Italian dialectical use could be used respectively to mean boyfriend & girlfriend and also a type of pasta (correctly a larger, hollow macaroni but as culinary terms they’ve apparently be applied more liberally).  The Italian zitellaggio (zitellaggi the plural) was the state of spinsterhood, the construct being zitella +‎ -aggio.  The suffix -aggio was from the Latin -āticum, probably via the Old Occitan –atge and was used to form nouns indicating an action or result related to the root verb.  Pleasingly, Zitella is a genus of metallic, wood-boring beetles in the family Buprestidae, containing four species and commonly known as jewel beetles or metallic wood-boring beetles.  Quite why the name was chosen isn’t immediately obvious but it’s not uncommon for genera and species to be named after an individual or a place associated with the discovery.  It’s therefore wholly speculative to suggest a link between an entomologist’s girlfriend and a wood-boring beetle.  Still, even that connection might be preferred to the archaic English form "thornback" (a woman over a certain age (quoted variously as 26 or 30 and thus similar in construction to the modern Chinese Sheng nu (剩女; shèngnǚ) (leftover women) who has never married and in the eighteenth century a thornback was thought "older than a spinster").

The slang “old maid”, referring to either to a spinster of a certain age or one who, although younger, behaves in a similar way (the implication being negative qualities such as fussiness or undesirability) is from the 1520s and the card game of that name is attested by 1831 (though it may now be thought a microaggression).  Bachelorette or the gender-neutral forms “unmarried” or “single” tend now to be preferred.  Spinster is a noun, spinsterish an adjective and spinsterishly an adverb but the most commonly used derived forms were probably the noun spinsterhood and the adjective spinsterlike.  The noun plural is spinsters.

End of spinsterhood.

On Sunday 28 November, Lindsay Lohan posted on Instagram her notice of engagement to Bader Shammas, then an assistant vice president at financial services company Credit Suisse.  At that point Ms Lohan should have been styled as betrothed which is the state of being engaged; the terms fiancé (or fiancée) also used.  By tradition, engagement rings are worn on the left hand.  Fortunately (for Instagram and other purposes), the ring-finger, partially severed in a nautical accident on the Aegean in 2016 was re-attached with some swift micro-surgery, the digit making a full recovery.  The couple's marriage was announced during 2022. 

Bachelorette

Bachelorette (pronounced bach-uh-luh-ret or bach-luh-ret)

(1) An unmarried young woman.

(2) In Canada, a term for a small apartment suitable for a single man.

1935: Some sources date the word from 1895 but it appears more likely bachelor-girl was first seen in 1888 and bachelorette is an American invention first noted in 1935.  Root is bachelor which came from the Middle English bachelor, derived from Anglo-Norman bacheler which exists in modern French as bachelier.  The Medieval Latin baccalārius was from Late Latin baccalāris and the Tuscan baccalare.  Ultimate source is a bit murky and strangely, although Old French had bachelette (young girl) in the 1400s, it's something English seems never to have borrowed.

Once were spinsters

Neither bachelor-girl (1888) nor bachelorette (1935) can really be considered proto-feminist because neither replaced spinster; merely re-defined as something applied to older un-married women; in the shifting hierarchy of misogyny, ageism prevailed.  It may thus be thought casual, female-specific ageism, especially because older, un-married men remain described as bachelors even if centenarians.  It’s not clear when spinster came to be thought of as disparaging and offensive but the usage certainly declined with rapidity after World War II and both it and bachelor have effectively been replaced with the gender-neutral single although in English common-law, the older forms lasted until 2005.

There's another quirk.  Middle French had the unrelated bachelette (young girl) which persists in the Modern French bachelière but that applies exclusively to students.  In the narrow technical sense, still sometimes insisted upon in British circles, a more proper neologism would be bacheloress, since -ess is the usual English suffix denoting a female subject, while -ette is a French-origin diminutive suffix, traditionally used to describe something smaller in size.  However, bachelorette was invented in the US where the -ette suffix can indicate a feminine version of a noun without implying a change in size.

In these gender-conscious times, the -ess suffix is anyway falling into disuse due to attempts to neutralize professional terms.  Except for historic references, it’s probably now obsolete.

Noted bachelorette Lindsay Lohan.

Monitor

Monitor (pronounced mon-i-ter)

(1) A student appointed to assist in the conduct of a class or school, as to help take attendance or keep order (largely obsolete).

(2) A person appointed to supervise students, applicants, etc., taking an examination, chiefly to prevent cheating; proctor.

(3) A person who admonishes, especially with reference to conduct.

(4) Something that serves to remind or give warning.

(5) A device or arrangement for observing, detecting, or recording the operation of a machine or system, especially an automatic control system.

(6) An instrument for detecting dangerous gases, radiation, etc.

(7) A receiving apparatus used in a control room, especially to provide a steady check of the quality of an audio or video transmission.

(8) A similar apparatus placed in various parts of a studio so that an audience can watch a recorded portion of a show, the performer can see the various segments of a program, etc.

(9) Any such receiving apparatus used in a closed-circuit system, as in an operating room.

(10) The screen component of a computer, especially a free-standing screen.

(11) In early computing, a control program which handled the primitive file-loading, essentially a precursor to operating systems.

(12) A type of armored warship of very low freeboard, having one or more turrets and used for coastal defense (now obsolete).

(13) In architecture, a raised construction straddling the ridge of a roof and having windows or louvers for lighting or ventilating a building, as a factory or warehouse.

(14) An articulated mounting for a nozzle, usually mechanically operated, which permits a stream of water to be played in any desired direction, as in firefighting or hydraulic mining (also called giant).

(15) Any of various large predatory lizards of the genus Varanus and family Varanidae, of Africa, southern Asia, the East Indies, and Australia, fabled to give warning of the presence of crocodiles.

(16)  To listen to or observe something.

(17) In Engineering, a tool holder, as for a lathe, shaped like a low turret, and capable of being revolved on a vertical pivot so as to bring the several tools successively into position.

1540-1550: From the Latin monitor (one who warns) from perfect passive participle monitus (warning) from the verb monēre (to remind, bring to (one's) recollection, tell (of); admonish, advise, warn, instruct, teach) from the primitive Indo-European moneie- (to make think of, remind), source also of the Sanskrit manayati (to honor, respect) and the Old Avestan manaiia- (making think), a suffixed (causative) form of the root men- (to think), source also of the Latin memini (I remember, I am mindful of) & mens (mind).  The notion was "one who or that which warns of faults or informs of duties".

The first use in English was to describe a "senior pupil at a school charged with keeping order" (vaguely analogous with the block kapo in a concentration camp), from the Latin monitor (one who reminds, admonishes, or checks," also "an overseer, instructor, guide, teacher).  The lizard picked up the name in 1826 because of the fable in which it was said to give warnings of Nile crocodiles.  The squat, slow-moving ironclad warship was first used in 1862 during the US Civil War, the name chosen by the inventor, Swedish-born U.S. engineer John Ericsson (1803-1889), because it was meant to "admonish" (in the sense of the senior pupil at a school) the Confederate leaders in the U.S. Civil War.

Use in broadcasting dates from 1924 when it meant "a device to continuously check on the technical quality of a radio transmission signals" and it was borrowed in 1931 during the development of early television broadcasts to describe "a TV screen displaying the picture from a particular camera."  It soon came to mean electronic screens of any type.  The general sense of monitoring stuff emerged in 1944 to describe certain wartime intelligence operations.  Interestingly, as early as 1918 the romantic poet John Keats (1795-1821) used it in the sense of "to guide".

Lindsay Lohan wearing court-mandated ankle monitor.  Strangely, despite attaching around the ankle, these are more frequently called bracelets than anklets.

Chanel Ankle Bags, Spring 2007 collection (left) and companion boot (right).

In one of several examples of the Lohanic influence on fashion and design, in their Spring 2007 collection, Chanel included a range of ankle bags.  Functional to the extent of affording the wearing a hands-free experience and storage for perhaps a lipstick, gloss and credit card (and the modern young spinster should seldom need more), the range was said quickly to "sell-out" although the concept hasn't been seen in subsequent collections so analysts of such things should make of that what they will.  Chanel offered the same idea in a boot, a design actually borrowed from the military although they tended to be more commodious and, being often used by aircrew, easily accessible while in a seated position, the sealable flap on the outer calf, close to the knee.

The Monitors

Monitors were curious looking, relatively small warships which, while neither fast nor heavily armored, carried disproportionately large guns, sometimes a single barrel as large as eighteen inches (460mm).  First used in the US Civil War, they saw service in several navies during both world wars and some were built by the US Navy as late as the 1960s to support costal operations in the Vietnam War.  Essentially a floating gun platform, they could be used only in shallow waters and were thus restricted to river and coastal duties where they were used as shore bombardment vessels.  Monitors have the distinction of firing heavier shells than other warships.

HMS Marshall Ney (1915-1957)

The Royal Navy has a sense of history and maintains in the service a great veneration for her most illustrious ships, names like Dreadnought, Victory & Vanguard often re-used on newer vessels to maintain the links with a history which dates back almost five-hundred years.  One ship not often mentioned in the annals is HMS Marshal Ney, laid down in 1915 as the first of two monitors of her class.  Designed to use 15 inch (380 mm) guns with mounts and turrets which became available when the Admiralty opted to reconfigure the battleships Renown and Repulse as battle cruisers, Marshal Ney and her sister ship Marshal Soult were named in recognition of historically unusual situation of the French being allies rather than enemies.  Built with the same armor as earlier monitors which mounted 12 inch (300 mm) guns, the original plan had been also to use the same well-regarded and reliable engines but an unfortunate decision was taken to use some diesel engines which were otherwise unallocated.  In short order, HMS Marshal Ney would come to be known as “the worst ship in the navy”.

The Vickers engines in the Marshal Soult, though underpowered, were reliable but those in her sister ship, built by the German company of MAN were a disaster, the problems thought a consequence of it being impossible in wartime to employ the German technicians experienced in servicing them or obtain the spare parts needed to fix them.  On the rare occasions the engines successfully started, they rarely ran for long without something “blowing up” and the engineers reports make clear, this expression was literal rather than used in the figurative sense often heard in engine rooms, pieces of shrapnel flying around with disturbing frequency.  Remarkably, there were only minor injuries.  As a result, the navy removed the big gun and installed it on the better performing monitor HMS Terror though in one of the coincidences of war, one of its barrels was on HMS Repulse when she was sunk by the Japanese in 1941.  The Admiralty re-armed the Marshal Ney, firstly with a single 9.2 inch (235 mm) gun and later, six with 6-inch (150 mm) bores but made no attempt to replace the engines, using the ship instead as a floating gun platform in the Channel, towed from port to port as required.  Despite being “the worst ship in the navy”, HMS Marshal Ney had a longer life on the active register than many more storied warships.  After the First World War, she became first a depot vessel and later an accommodation ship, renamed three times between 1922-1947, becoming successively Vivid, Drake and Alaunia II.  She was decommissioned in 1957 and sold for scrap, something which many sailors believed she'd been from the day she was launched.

Bracelet

Bracelet (pronounced breys-lit)

(1) An ornamental band or circlet for the wrist or arm or, sometimes, for the ankle.

(2) Slang in the criminal classes for a pair of handcuffs (almost always in the plural).

(3) In furniture design, types of collars.

(4) An expanding metal band for a wristwatch (usually used only as technical term within the industry).

(5) In law enforcement in some jurisdictions, as ankle bracelet (or tag), a device to monitor location or provide 24/7 real-time testing of drug or alcohol consumption (eg the SCRAM Bracelet (Secure Continuous Remote Alcohol Monitor)).

(6) In the field of combinatorics, a cyclical sequence of symbols used in combinatorial mathematics.

(7) An identification tag used by medical institutions to contain allergy, clinical or identity data or for religious or cultural purposes.

(8) In the history of armory, a type of personal body armor worn on the upper arm.

1400–1450: From the late Middle English from the Middle French, from the Old French bracel (literally “a little arm”), diminutive of bracelet, from the Latin bracchium (an arm; a forearm); the Latin brāchiāle (armlet) was a noun use of the neuter of brāchiālis + -et (from the Middle English & Old French -et, the suffix used to form diminutives, loosely construed, from the Late Latin –ittus).  Latin gained the word from the Ancient Greek brakhion (an arm) whereas the usual Latin word for an armlet (metal band or ring worn around the upper arm) was armilla which, in Late Latin, (1530s) meant also "a small intrusion of the sea into the land".  The migration from wrist to ankle as anklet (ornamental ring for an ankle) dates from 1810.  Synonyms include ornament, trinket, bangle, manacle, circlet, wristlet & armlet; the related adjective is armillary. 

Bangle (an ornamental ring worn upon the arm or ankle), dating from 1787, was absorbed by English under the Raj, borrowed from the Hindi bangri (colored glass bracelet or anklet).  Bracelets and bangles are both worn predominately on the wrist, the difference being a bracelet is of free-form design, made often from links or other connecting components not molded to a particular shape.  Bangles tend to be ring-shaped (although need not be perfectly circular) and made from solid materials.

Electronic Surveillance Bracelets

Lindsay Lohan wearing court mandated alcohol monitoring bracelet (2007).

The ubiquity in urban spaces of the global positioning system (GPS) has made possible electronic tagging, a form of surveillance using a device affixed to a person, secured most often around the ankle.  Curiously, both the industry and the agencies of law enforcement involved refer to them most often as monitoring or surveillance bracelets, even though the jewelry business from which bracelet is borrowed, uses the word to refer to things worn on the wrist, adornments around the ankle known as anklets.  Indeed, so specific are jewelers that they categorize their products with a range of self-explanatory coordinate terms derived from bracelet: armlet, kneelet, leglet and anklet.  To this they also add the seemingly superfluous necklet & wristlet but these are used to distinguish the loose-hanging necklace and bracelet from creations more close-fitting.  There appears to be no fingerlet or toelet, presumably because of the anatomical constraints in designing anything loose as companion products to rings and toe-rings, nipplelets a similarly improbable challenge of engineering.  Anklet is used also in some markets to describe a very short sock.

There appears no reason why surveillance devices attached around the ankle tend to be called bracelets other than the imitative inertia of use based on the early products being so-labelled.  That was despite anklet hardly being a novel form, having existed since 1810 and more venerable still was "bangle", dating from 1787 as a borrowing under the Raj of the Hindi bangri where it described a colored glass bracelet worn either on the wrist of ankle.  The original patents appear to have referenced “bracelet” so this may have influenced the pattern of use.  The phrase surveillance anklet certainly exists and is used commercially but is rare by comparison.

Chanel Ankle Bags, Spring 2007 collection (left) and companion boot (right).

In one of several examples of the Lohanic influence on fashion and design, in their Spring 2007 collection, Chanel included a range of ankle bags.  Functional to the extent of affording the wearing a hands-free experience and storage for perhaps a lipstick, gloss and credit card (and the modern young spinster should seldom need more), the range was said quickly to "sell-out" although the concept hasn't been seen in subsequent collections so analysts of such things should make of that what they will.  Chanel offered the same idea in a boot, a design actually borrowed from the military although they tended to be more commodious and, being often used by aircrew, easily accessible while in a seated position, the sealable flap on the outer calf, close to the knee.

Maiden

Maiden (pronounced meyd-n)

(1) A girl or young unmarried woman; a maid (archaic but still in literary and poetic use).

(2) A female virgin (archaic); used also of unmarried young females in the sense of a “bachelorette” (a spinster being “a maiden aunt”).

(3) In horse racing, a horse which has never won a race.

(4) In horse racing, a race open only to maiden horses.

(5) As “clothes maiden”, a northern English dialect form describing a frame on which clothes are hung to dry (a clothes horse).

(6) A machine for washing linen (obsolete).

(7) An instrument resembling the guillotine, once used in Scotland for beheading criminals.

(8) As “maiden name”, a woman’s surname, prior to taking that of her husband upon marriage.

(9) In land management, as virgin soil, virgin forest etc, an area in its natural state; unexploited.

(10) In pre-modern agriculture, the last sheaf of grain harvested, decorated with ribbons and regarded as a talisman (by extension the end of the harvest) (archaic).

(11) In botany, a tree or shrub grown from seed and never pruned.

(12) In cricket, as “maiden over”, for a bowler to complete an over (now six legitimate deliveries) without conceding a run; a “wicket maiden” is an over in which a wicket fell with no runs being scored (thus double-wicket maiden & hat-trick maiden).

(13) Of, relating to, or befitting a girl or unmarried woman (archaic but preserved in phrases such as “her maiden virtues”. “a maiden blush” et al).

(14) Of an unmarried woman, older than a certain age (generally past middle age), often in the form “maiden aunt”.

(15) Something made, tried, appearing etc, for the first time (maiden flight, maiden speech, maiden voyage etc).

(16) In military slang, an untested (or untried in battle) knight, soldier or weapon; a fortress never captured or violated.

Pre-1000: From the Middle English mayden & meiden, from the Old English mæden  & mægden (unmarried woman (usually young); virgin; girl; maidservant), originally a diminutive of mægð or mægeð (virgin, girl; woman, wife), the construct being mægd, mægth or mægeth, from the Proto-West Germanic magaþ, from the Proto-Germanic magaþs & magadin (young womanhood, sexually inexperienced female) (and cognate with the Old Norse mogr (young man), the Old Irish maug & mug (slave), and the Gothic magaths) + -en (the diminutive suffix).  The Proto-Germanic was the source also of the Old Saxon magath, the Old Frisian maged, Old High German magad (virgin, maid), the German Magd (maid, maidservant), the German Mädchen (girl, maid) from Mägdchen (little maid), the feminine variant of the primitive Indo-European root maghu- (“young of either sex; “unmarried person” and the source also of the Old English magu (child, son, male descendant), the Avestan magava- (unmarried) and the Old Irish maug & mug (slave)).  Maiden is a noun & adjective, maidenly is an adjective, maidenship & maidenhood  are nouns and maidenish is an adjective; the noun plural is maidens.

Iron Maiden is a heavy metal band active since 1975, their eponymous album in 1980 the debut release of studio-recorded material.  Their album cover-art has become something of a motif and is widely reproduced in posters, T-shirts and such, their music is said to possess a similar consistency.

In thirteenth century Middle English, “maiden” could be used as a slur to refer to “a man lacking or abstaining from sexual experience” and in Scotland it was the official term for a guillotine-like device used to behead criminals.  In horse racing, a maiden horse is one which has never won a race (although in the mid-eighteen century it was sometimes used of horses which had not previously contested a race.  A maiden race is one restricted to maiden horses (which can be mares, stallions or geldings).  The figurative sense of "new, fresh, untried” (maiden flight, maiden speech, maiden voyage etc) seems first to have been used in the 1550s.  The idea of the maiden name (a woman’s surname, prior to taking that of her husband upon marriage) dates from the 1680s.  The noun maidenhood (state of being a maiden; state of an unmarried female; virginity) was from the Old English mægdenhad while the adjective maidenly (like a maid, becoming to a maid; gentle, modest, reserved) was first documented in the mid 1600s.

Headbanger Lindsay Lohan in Iron Maiden T-shirts.

The term Hiroshima maiden (or A-bomb maiden) was in the 1950s used to refer to the Japanese & Korean women disfigured by the radiation from the A-bombs dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki in August 1945, the term coming into use in 1955 when they were sent to the US for reconstructive plastic surgery.  In Norse mythology, the billow maidens were any of the nine daughters of the sea-god Ran and a skjaldmær (shieldmaiden) was a female virgin who had chosen to fight as a warrior in battle.  In several tales from mythology, an ice maiden was one of the ice people (or people of the ice), a woman from a place of snow and ice (in popular culture, the idea was borrowed in fantasy writing.  In idiomatic use, an ice maiden (also ice princess or ice queen) is a beautiful but cold (heartless) woman.  In Westminster parliamentary systems, the maiden speech of a member is their first substantive address to a chamber.  By convention it is (1) uncontroversial and (2) listened to by the house in polite silence although in cases where the member has not followed the convention, there have been some famous interjections.  Maiden ventures by machinery have sometimes become infamous.  Ships have sunk on their maiden voyages including RMS Titanic (1912) and the Wasa (or Vasa), a Swedish warship at the time one of the fastest and most heavily gunned in the world (1628).  In aviation, many aircraft have crashed on their maiden flights (test pilots are truly intrepid types) although it’s a myth that included the Supermarine Spitfire.  Less fortunate was the German industry in the later stages of World War II (1939-1945) when development was being rushed and at least two prototypes are known to have either crashed or suffered severe damage during their maiden test flights including the Heinkel He 162 Volksjäger (People's Fighter).  In the case of the He 162 the maiden flight actually ended without incident and it was only a subsequent investigation of the airframe (after another prototype He 162 had crashed) which revealed the adhesive used to bond wooden components was so acidic it caused the timber to disintegrate.

An iron maiden towering above other instruments of torture.

The infamous torture chamber known as the iron maiden is now though to be mythical and an invention of those who wished to characterize the Middle Ages as a time of barbarism and savagery.  It was said to be a solid iron cabinet with a hinged front, large spikes fitted throughout the interior and designed to be large enough to accommodate an adult human.  Once the door was closed, it was said to be impossible to avoid being “spiked” and with every movement, one became “more spiked”.  Although their existence has been disproved, iron maidens (most apparently built in the nineteenth century) are a popular exhibit in “museums of torture”, some probably genuine “torture coffins” to which the spikes were a latter addition.  Quite why it was felt necessary to “invent” the iron maiden given there were so many examples of equally gruesome Medieval torture devices isn’t clear but it may be there was some desire to exonerate the torturers of Antiquity who really did use such things; among post Renaissance historians, such was the veneration for the Classical world that wherever possible, things were blamed on the Middle Ages.

In the English legal system, maiden assize came to mean an assize (periodic courts with on a circuit basis were conducted around England and Wales until 1972,) at which there were no criminal cases to be heard although originally it was an assize at which no prisoner was condemned to die.  There used to be some ritualism attached to the declaration of a maiden assize and the tradition wasn’t unknown in the US:  If a judge, upon opening a session of their assize found there were no cases to be heard, the clerk of the court would present him with a pair of white gloves, the marker of a maiden assize, the significance being that judges, as a mark of submission to the Crown, were always gloveless when executing the royal commission.

Crossbody

Crossbody (pronounced kraws-bod-ee or kros‐bod-ee)

(1) Of or noting a type of bag, distinguished by a long shoulder strap intended to be worn diagonally across the body.  A crossbody purse or crossbody wallet is a variation on the theme.

(2) In professional (ie choreographed) wrestling, a term covering several aerial moves in which one competitor launches themselves from a height (sometimes using the ring’s ropes or corner-posts to gain altitude) landing horizontally or diagonally across their (often already) prostrate opponent's torso, forcing them to the mat if they were standing.

Early 1950s: The construct was cross + body.  As a prefix, cross was from the Middle English cros- & crosse- (relating to a cross, forming a cross, in the shape of a cross or “X”), developed from the noun and influenced by “across”.  Body (the spelling bodie is long obsolete) was from the Middle English bodi & bodiȝ, from the Old English bodiġ (body, trunk, chest, torso, height, stature), from the Proto-West Germanic bodag (body, trunk), from the primitive Indo-European bhewd (to be awake, observe).  It was cognate with the Old High German botah from which the Swabian gained Bottich (body, torso).  Although as late as the sixteenth century, “body” was used in the now archaic sense of the “section of a dress or gown extending from the neck to the waist but excluding the arms” the idea of the crossbody was a reference always to “the body” in the sense of the physical structure of a human form, in this case the torso, the line extending from a shoulder to around the opposite hip.  The alternative spelling is cross–body.  Crossbody is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is crossbodies.

The cross-prefix has widely been used for similar or analogous purposes such as the crossbow, (an early, mechanized version of the bow and arrow), the cross-bolt (a means of adding additional structural rigidity to the main bearings in an internal combustion engine by adding locating bolts at a 90^o angle to those mounted vertically) and cross-purposes (a conversation in which two or more are talking while misunderstanding each other's plans, intentions or meanings) and the cross-stitch (in needlework or embroidery, a double-stitch which forms a cross.  Many other uses such as cross-country, cross-dresser, cross-cultural et al, are different in that they don’t involve the “X” shape or (of necessity) anything in a diagonal.

Bill Clinton & Monica Lewinsky, the White House, February 1997, one of the photographs of the 1990s.

Monica Lewinsky (1973) was the young intern of whom in 1998 Bill Clinton (b 1946; US president 1993-2001) infamously remarked “I did not have sexual relations with that woman… Miss Lewinsky.”  Had that been something said in a county court in a remote flyover state of a consensual encounter between two obscure private citizens, defense counsel may have succeeded in arguing that for there to be “sexual relations” one must have “sex” and what transpired had not crossed the accepted definitional threshold.  In 1998, there probably were still places where such distinctions were maintained but because what happened happened in the White House between the chief magistrate of the United States and an intern a quarter century younger, Monicagate played out.  As presidential scandals go there have certainly been worse and as Harold Macmillan (1894–1986; UK prime-minister 1957-1963) replied when woken in the middle of the night to be told a member of his cabinet was in the midst of an affair with a young lady “with both a present and a past” who was also enjoying the affections of a Soviet spy: “Well at least it was with a woman.”  That the liaisons with the Russian were arranged at the behest of MI5 (the UK's internal security organization) is one of the many details which made the Profumo Affair (John Profumo (1915–2006)) one of the century's juiciest scandals although, some of the files containing "sensitive" information about members of the English establishment remain embargoed until 2046. Even then, few expect to see unredacted papers. 

Bill Clinton and crooked Hillary Clinton, the Hamptons, 2021.

A youthful indiscretion is one thing but an indiscretion with a youth is something else and whether crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013) ever forgave her husband only she knows but she didn’t leave him so there was that.  She had her own reasons to stay which may or may not have involved forgiveness but the conventional political wisdom remains that had the US constitution allowed it, Bill Clinton would probably have enjoyed a comfortable victory in the 2000 presidential election so enough of the US population either forgave him or were indifferent in the matter.  Monica Lewinsky fared not as well, being as unprepared for what ensued as just about anyone in her position would have been and it’s remarkable she coped as well as she did.  However, now 50, Ms Lewinsky has survived and in February 2024 emerged as the face of women’s fashion label Reformation’s latest campaign, one focused on corporate workwear and, in concert with vote.org, encouraging women to “use their voice” in the upcoming election and given the extent to which recent court decisions have encouraged an influential faction in the Republican Party to mount further assaults on the rights of women, their vote has the potential to be decisive in contests for both houses of Congress.

Monica Lewinsky's photoshoot for Reformation’s You’ve Got the Power campaign. 

The “You’ve Got the Power” campaign slogan thus has a dual meaning, referencing both the exercise of the franchise and the “power dressing” of the wardrobe (good taste prevailed and no electric blue dresses were featured) although big shoulder pads didn’t make a return which would have disappointed some but the corporate staples red (here described as “scarlet”) and black were prominent.  The range was conservative as befits the target market but seems to have been well-received and serious students of such things especially appreciated the inclusion of an irregular polka-dot in black & white.  Ms Lewinsky certainly looked good and while photographers have tricks to play with lighting and angles, there’s little to suggest much post-production editing was done; she looked a youthful, elegant 50.  One piece which attracted attention was the “Monica” bag which came with both a fitted top-handle and a longer strap, allowing it to be carried on the shoulder or as a crossbody.

Reformation’s "Monica" crossbody bag in black (left) and topo (right).

The Monica crossbody bag is available in topo or black.  Topo is a Spanish word meaning “mole” (both (1) in zoology as the small mammal and (2) in the jargon of espionage a “sleeper agent” who infiltrates an organization, usually to spy) and as a dark brownish-grey colour (ie an approximation of the colour of a mole's skin (hence the familiar "moleskin"), it’s the equivalent of the English taupe, from the French taupe, from the Latin talpa (mole).  In the circumstances, “talpa” presumably was more appealing to the marketing department than “moleskin” although “black” was refreshingly simple.  Reformation’s Monica (as in the crossbody bag) web page recommended the topo hue worked well paired with their “Lysander” dress, available in “selene” (the rather fetching polka-dot) or “midnight” (a dark blue close to navy and far enough removed from the shade of dress Ms Lewinsky made famous not to attract comment).  How fashion houses come up with product names is often mysterious.  Lysander was from the Ancient Greek Λῠ́σᾰνδρος (Lúsandros) and is a (now rare) male given name although in the US there has in the twenty-first century been a modest resurgence.  In the Greek, the name was used to denote “liberator” and it became entrenched in English probably because William Shakespeare (1564–1616) used it in the comedy, A Midsummer Night's Dream (1596), a romp in which Lysander found himself under Puck's spell after running away with his beloved Hermia, enduring a half-dozen cases of mistaken identity before being reunited, marrying in a triple ceremony (all of which sounds curiously modern in a Netflix sort of way).  What Reformation may have had in mind was Lysander (circa 454-395 BC), the Spartan admiral who liberated his people from the hegemony of Athens, his most famous victory being the sinking of the Athenian fleet at the Battle of Aegospotami (405 BC), the engagement which ended the Peloponnesian War.  Presumably, the thinking at Reformation was the name of an admiral from Antiquity was enough of a connection with navy blue although that tradition of use in navies began many centuries later.  There was also the Westland Lysander, a World War II (1939-1945) era communications & support aircraft used by the British Army and best remembered for (1) its role in smuggling spies and saboteurs into occupied Europe and (2) the unusual use of the wheel spats as mounting points for machine guns and ordnance such as 250lb (115 KG) bombs.  In production in the UK & Canada between 1936-1943, it was an uncelebrated but versatile platform which provided invaluable service in the clandestine operations run by the UK’s remarkably large number of agencies concerned with dirty tricks and other murky business.  It’s not likely Reformation thought much about the aircraft.

The Monicagate (1998) effect: The decline of the use of the name Monica in the US

Monica is a female given name and the variants in other European languages include Monique (French & Dutch), Mónica (Spanish Portuguese & Italian), Mônica (Brazilian Portuguese), Monika (Polish, Slovak, Slovine, Lithuanian, Croatian, Finnish, German & Indian, Czech, Bulgarian, Latvian, Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian & Danish), Moonika (Estonia), Mónika (Hungarian) and Mònica (Catalan).  The origin is obscure but may be from a Phoenician, Punic or Berber dialect, the oldest known instance being as the name of the mother of Saint Augustine of Hippo (354–430) although it has also been associated with the Ancient Greek μόνος (monos) (alone, only, sole, single).  It was Monica who converted Augustine to Christianity and in gratitude the Church also canonized her.  The Latin name Monica was from monere (to advise), an inflection of moneō, from the Proto-Italic moneō, from the primitive Indo-European monéyeti, causative from men- (to think); it was etymologically unrelated to later forms.  As an English name, it has been in use since the mid-eighteenth century while in the US, popularity peaked in the mid-1970s before beginning a gradual decline which became a precipitous plummet after 1999, something it seems reasonable to attribute to “the Monicagate effect”.

Lindsay Lohan with crossbody bags: At the LLohan Nightclub pop-up event, Playboy Club, New York, October 2019 (David Koma crystal-embellished cady midi dress with asymmetric hem, Valentino Rockstud 110mm pumps and Chanel mini tweed bag with crossbody strap from the Spring/Summer 2015 runway collection) (left) and with Louis Vuitton Louis Vuitton Le Coussin BB Bag (with a detachable crossbody strap), arriving at JFK Airport, August 2022 (right).

Creature of habit: Audrey Hepburn carrying her crossbody purse, Rome, 1971.

The crossbody bag in one form or another would have existed about as long as there have been bag-like creations for holding stuff because the design offers the advantage of transferring the weight to the shoulders (alternating if required) and leaving the user inherently "hands free".  Although for centuries a feature of military webbing, as a packaged piece of fashion, the industry usually credits the "design" of the product to Robert Sakowitz and later refinements to his daughter Bunny (she added the game-changing zipper!), the latter acknowledging a debt to the eighteenth century cross-body "strap bags".   The mix of thoughtful detailing, practicality and high prices meant that in the 1950s it soon became a a fashion staple and Audrey Hepburn (1929–1993) using one in her portrayal of the modern young spinster Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) cemented it's place.  It's never left and a crossbody bag is merely one worn across the body with the strap extending diagonally from one shoulder to the opposite hip but the utility come from (1) hands-free convenience, (2) security & stability while affording ease of access to multiple compartments and (3) the ability to optimize weight distribution.  The crossbody method can be applied to bags of various sizes and there are even crossbody wallets and small purses and while such things might sound merely decorative, men tend often forget it's not uncommon for a woman's entire outfit to include not one pocket and in an era when it's become possible to carry only one's phone, a lipstick and a small can of mace; practicality need no longer be big.

The Monica 560

France's finest ever: 1963 Facel Vega Facel II.

In the fashion business there have been a number of products named “Monica” and it’s likely this often was for no reason other than it was thought appropriately feminine and pleasing to use.  There is also an automotive footnote, the Monica 560 a French-built luxury car which was the last of the first generation of trans-Atlantic hybrids which, combining elegant European coachwork with robust, powerful, very cheap (and very thirsty) US-sourced drive-trains, flourished between the mid-1950s and the first oil shock two decades later.  It’s often said the Monica was an attempt to resurrect the much lamented Facel Vegas (1954-1964) but the founder was more nostalgic still, the industrialist Jean Tastevin (1919-2016) recalling the pre-war Delahayes, Bugattis Delages & Buccialis, French cars which ranked with the world’s finest.  However, when in the late 1960s Monsieur Tastevin surveyed the scene, even the more expensive French cars, whatever their other virtues (some of which were admittedly well concealed), were under-powered and although in many ways sophisticated, lacked the power and refinement of the British, US & European competition.  His core business was the large conglomerate Compagnie française de produits métallurgiques (CFPM) which specialized in building freight rail wagons, his imaginative business model including leasing them, a form of vertical integration which provided a stable revenue stream during periods of diminished demand.  

One of the valve cover castings for a Martin V8 installed in a prototype Monica.

With this industrial capacity and financial infrastructure, he reasoned building a car to compete with the other speciality builders (and he included in that the upper-range Mercedes-Benz, Jaguars and such) was within CFPM’s capacity and in that he may have been correct but a combination of bad decisions, bad luck and bad timing doomed the project.  The first mistake was to try to match Maserati & Ferrari in the use of a bespoke engine rather than the US V8s pragmatically adopted by Jensen, Bristol, Iso, Monterverdi and others; Tastevin wanted a thoroughbred, not a bastard.  What was available was a V8 designed by the gifted English engineer Ted Martin (1922-2010) and it was in many ways outstanding being robust, compact, powerful and light.  Convinced, Tastevin bought the rights along with the collateral contract under which Rolls-Royce agreed to handle the production, the prestige of a “Rolls-Royce-built engine” another thing which appealed.  Unfortunately, Monsieur Tastevin subsequently demanded of Rolls-Royce they guarantee the power output of each unit, an underwriting the company declined on the basis that as a manufacturing and assembly contractor of something they’d not designed and tested, they were not prepared to guarantee someone else’s work.  His contract well-written, Ted Martin kept the money and Tastevin had to find another engine.

The first (left) and second (centre) Monica prototypes and the Amiot 143M (1931-1944), a French five-seat reconnaissance bomber (right).

By early 1968, that was still to happen and prototypes were built with the Martin V8.  There was progress in that the chassis and most of the underpinnings were in close to their final form but the all-important styling was still a work in progress although that is being charitable, the appearance of the early prototypes in the tradition of some of the inter-war bombers built for the French Air Force which to this day remain among the ugliest aircraft ever to fly.  The English were involved in the appearance of the early cars so blame can be shared and it wasn’t until the Italian carrozzeria Vignale became involved, something like the final, sleek form emerged although the work would be brought to fruition by others because Vignale subsequently was shuttered.  One thing which was deemed right as soon as the decision was made was the car’s name: Madam Tastevin’s name was Monique.

The Monica stand, Paris Motor Show, 1972.

The Monica made its debut at the Paris Motor Show, late in 1972 and impressed many with the look of its jewel-like V8 and sumptuous interior although the price raised a few eyebrows, costing as much as two Citroën SMs, then the most expensive car produced in France.  In the way of such things, the sales projections were optimistic, suggesting as many as 500 Monicas annually even though the market for big, expensive four-door saloons had become crowded; not only were specialists like Iso, Monterverdi and De Tomaso offering fully-developed and well-established models with reliable US V8s, Jaguar’s V12-powered XJ12 had set a dynamic benchmark at an extraordinarily low price and Mercedes-Benz were rumoured to be preparing a 7.4 litre (452 cubic inch) version of their epoch making S-Class (W116) (post-oil shock, eventually it would in 1975 surface as the 450 SEL 6.9).  Still, in 1972, generally, there was faith in the future.

1973 Monica 560 interior.  The engine was from the US, the leather & burl walnut was English, it was styled in Italy and the gearbox was German (or from the US if automatic).  It had a "French flavor". 

There optimism was still in the air in 1973 (the oil wouldn’t stop flowing until October) but by then the hunt was on for a new engine.  The contractual squabble with Rolls-Royce was one thing but by then, it had anyway finally occurred to Tastevin’s inexperienced team that the Martin V8, an enlarged racing engine, was never going to possess the characteristics needed in a luxury car.  It was noisy, at its best with a manual gearbox and at anything but high revs (where it needed to operate to produce the required power), somewhat rough.  In the early 1960s the Maserati Quattroporte had been much the same and it sold well but then there were few alternatives and the world had moved on; what buyers now wanted was the turbine-like smoothness of the XJ12 or the effortless torque of the big-displacement V8 hybrids.  The 3.4 litre (209 cubic inch) Martin V8 was a vibrant thing which would have been entertaining in a sports car but it wasn't what the target market now expected in a luxury saloon.  Tastevin’s original plan had been to build a high-performance sports car and the switch to four-door coachwork came early in the development process.  Of all the hybrids built in the era, the Monica was the only one never offered as a coupé. 

One of the few: 1974 Monica 560 Berlina.

Surrendering to the inevitable, Tastevin phoned Detroit and arranged to purchase a batch of Chrysler’s 340 cubic inch (5.6 litre) (LA) V8s, one of the best of the small-block engines of the era and equally adaptable either to the company’s TorqueFlite automatic transmission or the ZF five-speed manual which still had real appeal for some.  Although by then somewhat detuned from its peak during the muscle car years, the 340 could be run in Europe without most of the power-sapping anti-pollution gear insisted on by US regulators (things were different then) and the performance was sparkling; in deference to Europeans for whom cubic inches were mysterious, the car was named the Monica 560.  In 1974, the finished product was ready for sale although inflation meant the already high price had risen by over 50% since 1972 and the four-fold increase in the price of oil in the wake of the embargo had punished demand for fast, thirsty, cars, especially those from a previously unknown manufacturer.  By late 1974, many of the makers of the trans-Atlantic hybrids were either closed or in the throes of what would for most be a not long-protracted demise.  After 17 Monicas were sold in a few months, it was obvious the math was wrong and in February 1975, the company’s closure was announced, one of many such press-releases that year and while a handful of uncompleted chassis were brought to a finished state by a contracted third party, it’s never been clear how many.  Had the Monica 560 been brought to market in 1968 or 1969, it might have enjoyed some years of modest suggest although there’s no reason to believe it would have weathered the winds of change brought by the 1970s any better that the others which fell victim.