Thistle

Thistle (pronounced this-uhl)

(1) Any of numerous perennial composite plants of the genera Cirsium, Cynara, Carduus, Onopordum and related genera, having prickly-edged leaves, pink, purple, yellow, or white dense flower heads, and feathery hairs on the seeds: family Asteraceae (composites).

(2) A common term for many other prickly plants.

(3) The national emblem of Scotland since the fifteenth century.

(4) As the Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle (1687), a United Kingdom order of chivalry associated with Scotland; the word denoting membership of this order.

Pre 900: From the Middle English thistel, from the Old English thīstel (the earlier form was þistel).  The origin was probably the Proto-Germanic þistilaz & thistilaz, the source also of the Old Saxon thistil, the Old High German distil & thīstil, the German Distel, the Old Norse þistell & thīstill, the Scots thrissel, the Danish tidsel, the Dutch distel and the Icelandic þistill.  The root is uncertain origin but may have been an extended form of the primitive Indo-European (s)teyg & steig- (to prick, stick, pierce).  The adjective is thistly and the noun plural thistles.

Insignia of The Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle.

The Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle is an order of chivalry of the United Kingdom which, unusually, is one of a small class in the personal gift of the sovereign whereas most are conferred on the basis of a recommendation from the various governments where the British monarch remains head of state.  The order was founded in 1687 by King James VII of Scotland (1633-1701; James II of England and Ireland) who at the time asserted it was a revival of an earlier order but historians doubt the claim, the royal warrant of 1687 containing some dubious history and most doubtful chronology.  Nor is there any documentary evidence to support the idea an award in some way linked to the thistle was instituted after the Scottish victory at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314, the earliest vaguely plausible claim dating from the fifteenth century when James III (1451-1488) adopted the thistle as the royal insignia and minted coins depicting thistles.  There’s nothing however to support any link with knighthoods or other orders of chivalry and all that is certain is that the thistle became established as an emblem of Scotland, attached firstly to the royal court and later to the national identity.

The troublesome Bull Thistle.

Not discouraged by tiresome, inconvenient history, in 1687 James VII issued letters patent for an order of knighthood "reviving and restoring the Order of the Thistle to its full glory, lustre and magnificency".  Intended to be exclusive, membership was limited to twelve but James was deposed in the Glorious Revolution (1688) and no appointments to the order were made beyond the original eight although the exiled House of Stuart continued to issue what came to be referred to as “the Jacobite Thistle”, these not acknowledged by the British Crown.  The award of the Thistle resumed in 1704, before even the 1707 Acts of Union under which the kingdoms of England and Scotland united as a single sovereign state known as Great Britain.  The motto of the order is Nemo me impune lacessit (No one provokes me with impunity), an adoption of that which had been used by the Royal Stuart dynasty of Scotland since at least the 1570s.  It's used also by three of the British Army's Scottish regiments and appears on both the royal coat of arms of the Kingdom of Scotland and the version of the royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom used in Scotland.

In the UK’s order of precedence, Knights and Ladies of the Thistle rank second only to the Order of the Garter and the wives, sons, daughters and daughters-in-law of Knights of the Thistle also can rise a few notches on the order of precedence, a courtesy not extended to any relative of a Lady of the Thistle, something which must be seen as an anomaly in the early twenty-first century but which probably cannot easily be reformed in isolation, any alteration in these things likely to trigger a chain-reaction of events in a system designed to resist change.  The television show Yes Minister did offer an alternative explanation for the mechanism for awarding the Thistle, suggesting “…a committee sits on it”.

Sir Robert Menzies (1894–1978; prime minister of Australia 1939-1941 & 1949-1966) in his Knight of the Thistle robes.

Like the Most Noble Order of the Garter (1348) and the Royal Victorian Order (1896), the Thistle lies in the personal gift of the sovereign rather than being an award made by governments as is the case with most honors.  Unusually too, the Thistle is geographically specific, awarded only to those with some connection to Scotland, although, they need not be actually Scottish.  The equivalent Irish Order, the Most Illustrious Order of St Patrick (1783) was for those with an association with Ireland handled in a similar manner to the Thistle but awards were restricted after independence was granted to Eire (southern Ireland) in 1922 and the order has been dormant (though not abolished) since 1936.  This follows the practice applied to imperial honors tied to particular colonies of the Raj and the old British Empire, the Indian (the Most Exalted Order of the Star of India (1861) & the Most Eminent Order of the Indian Empire (1878)) and Burmese (the Order of Burma (1940)) orders dormant since the respective grants of independence in 1947 & 1948.  Presumably, were Scotland to become an independent state, the Thistle too would lapse into a similar state of abeyance.

Clan Lindsay car seat covers.

Clan Lindsay is a Scottish clan of the Scottish Lowlands although the origins of the Lindsay name lie in England, south of the border.  Lindsay is a toponym (a word derived from the name of a locality), itself drawn from the Old English toponym Lindesege (Island of Lind), a reference to the city of Lincoln, in which Lind is the original Brittonic form of the name, the “island” referring to Lincoln being an island in the surrounding fenland.  Under Roman occupation, the area in Lincolnshire now occupied by the city of Lincoln was known as Lindum Colonia, shortened in the Old English to Lindocolina and later to Lincylene, Lindum a Latinized form of a native Brittonic name which had been reconstructed as Lindon (pool or lake).  In the late nineteenth century, as the modern convention in the Western World (Christian name + Surname) became (more or less) standardized, like many others, surnames Lindsay and Lindsey began to be used as given names although it wasn’t until the mid-1960s that it became common in the Commonwealth to use them for girls, a trend which spread quickly to the US and by late in the century, the use for boys rapidly declined, the two trends presumably not unrelated.

Lindsay Lohan in tartan for Freaky Friday (2003) costume test photos (left), the Clan Lindsay tartan garden flag with swan crest, augmented by the thistle (national flower of Scotland) emblems (centre) and Clan Lindsay T-Shirt with stylized thistle (right).  The Clan Lindsay motto is Endure Fort (Endure Bravely).

Grit

Grit (pronounced grit)

(1) Abrasive particles or granules, as of sand or other small, coarse impurities found in the air, food, water etc.

(2) Firmness of character; indomitable spirit; pluck.

(3) A coarse-grained siliceous rock, usually with sharp, angular grains.

(4) To cause to grind or grate together.

(5) To make a scratchy or slightly grating sound, as of sand being walked on; grate.

Pre-1000; From the Middle English gret, griet and grit, from the Old English grēot (sand, dust, earth, gravel), cognate with the German Griess and the Old Norse grjōt (pebble, boulder), the Germanic forms all derived from the Old High German grioz.  The Proto-Germanic was greutan (tiny particles of crushed rock) which was the root for the Old Saxon griot, the Old Frisian gret, the Old Norse grjot (rock, stone) and the German Grieß (grit, sand).  Ultimate root was the primitive Indo-European ghreu (rub, grind), a fork of which begat the Lithuanian grudas (corn, kernel), the Old Church Slavonic gruda (clod) and the Serbo-Croatian grȕda (lump).  An interesting variation is the specifically wintertime use as the Lithuanian grúodas (frost; frozen street dirt).  The sense of an indomitable spirit, a display of pluck, spirit, firmness of mind, was first recorded in American English in 1808 and the meaning “make a grating sound" is attested from 1762.  The change in pronunciation happened during the era of Middle English when grete & griet were subject to the early modern vowel shortening to become grit.  Grit is a noun & verb, gritted is a verb & adjective, gritting is a verb & noun, gritter is a noun and gritty is an adjective; the noun plural is grits (although "grittings" is (in this context) in wider use).

Harford Lower Extremity Specialists (HLES) illustrating things with a gritty foot.

In culinary use “grits” is used to describe a type of porridge made from coarsely ground dried maize or hominy (the latter a maize which has been nixtamalized (a process in which the grain is soaked and cooked in an alkaline solution (usually limewater) and hulled with the pericarp (ovary wall) removed.  The dish is most associated with the US, south of the Mason-Dixon Line and traditionally was cooked in warm salted water or milk, often served with flavourings as a breakfast dish; grits can be savory or sweet.  Grits was from the Old English grytt (coarse meal). Grits (in this sense of coarsely ground corn), occasionally takes a singular verb, especially in the southern US.

Through gritted teeth

ESL (English as a second language) teachers report the phrase “through gritted teeth” is one of those most readily understood by those new to the language; it seems a universal concept.  Although it can be used in the literal sense to mean “clench one's teeth together tightly because of pain”, it’s more common in the idiomatic to mean “to confront a difficult or disagreeable situation and deal with one’s negative feelings by adopting a superficial display of acceptance”.  Best explained by the companion phrase “grin and bear it”, the essential nuance is it carries the implication of a passive display of disapproval while not overtly raising objection, honor thus satisfied on both sides.

Tony Abbott (b 1957; Prime Minister of Australian 2013-2015), celebrating the marriage of his sister, Christine Forster to wife Virginia Flitcroft, Sydney, February 2018.  This photograph encapsulates the concept of "confronting a difficult or disagreeable situation and deal with one’s negative feelings by adopting a superficial display of acceptance".

A gritter truck, spreading grit.

Gritter trucks are a type of winter service vehicle (WSV) used in areas where sustained conditions of sub-zero temperatures cause icy roads.  Usually called "gritters", they're known also as "salters", "salt spreaders" or "salt shakers" and are used to spread grit (usually rock salt, sometimes mixed with sand) onto roads.  The salt lowers the melting point of ice and the sand improves traction, the resulting liquid water flowing to the road's edge by virtue of the slight slopes from the centre-line engineers include as a part of roadway design.  In earlier times when prevention techniques were less comprehensive, cars in areas where salt was widely used sometimes needed to be scrapped in as little as 2-3 years, such was the extent of their rust.  Even now, cars in such places have a notably shorter life.  The Scots seem to be most imaginative in name their “gritters” and those noted spreading grit include Gritallica; Ready, Spready, Go!; Sled Zepplin; For Your Ice Only; Gritt Scott!; Frosty the Snow Plough; Grit and BEAR It; Mr Snow-it-all; Mrs McGritter; Salt Shaker; Salty Claus; Gritty Gritty Bang Bang; Get a Grit; Thistle do nicely; Blizzard Wizard; Hagrit; Salty; Grit A Bit; I Want to Break Freeze; Mega Melter; Always Be Grit-full; Scotland’s Bravest Gritter; Basil Salty; Licence to Chill; Sir Salter Scott; Nitty Gritty; Grit-Tok; BFG (Big Friendly Gritter); Snow place like home; Gritty McGrit Face; Griticle Mass; I’ve Grit a Crush on you; Don’t go Grittin’ my heart; Thistle gets through; Oh my Gritty Aunt and Taylor Drift.

Purple

Purple (pronounced pur-puhl)

(1) Any color having components of both red and blue (often highly saturated), the darker the hue, the more likely to be described thus.

(2) In color theory, any non-spectral color on the line of purples on a color chromaticity diagram or a color wheel between violet and red.

(3) A dye or pigment producing such a colour

(4) Cloth or clothing of this hue, especially as formerly worn distinctively by persons of imperial, royal, or other high rank.

(5) In the Roman Catholic Church, a term at various times used to describe a monsignor, bishop or cardinal (or their office), now most associated with the rank, office or authority of a cardinal.

(6) Imperial, regal, or princely in rank or position.

(7) Any of several nymphalid butterflies including the red-spotted purple and the banded purple)

(8) Of or pertaining to the color purple (or certain things regarded as purple).

(9) In writing, showy or overwrought; exaggerated use of literary devices and effects; marked by excessively ornate rhetoric (purpureal).

(10) In language, profane or shocking; swearing.

(11) In modern politics, relating to or noting political or ideological diversity (in the US based on the blending of Democrat (blue) and Republican (red); in other places red & blue indicate different places on the political spectrum).

(12) In drug slang; the purple haze cultivar of cannabis in the kush family, either pure or mixed with others, or by extension any variety of smoked marijuana (“purple haze” a popular name for commercially available weed in those places where such thing are lawful.  Purple haze was originally slang for LSD.

(13) In agriculture, earcockle, a disease of wheat.

(14) To make or become purple (or, in ecclesiastical use, to put on one’s purple vestments) .

Pre 1000: From the Middle English noun and adjective purple, purpel & purpur, from Old English purpuren & purpul, a dissimilation (first recorded in Northumbrian, in the Lindisfarne gospel) of purpure (purple dye, a purple garment), from the adjective purpuren (purple; dyed or colored purple), from purpura (a kind of shellfish, Any of various species of molluscs from which Tyrian purple dye was obtained, especially the common dog whelk; the dye; cloth so dyed; splendid attire generally), from the Ancient Greek πορφύρα (porphýra or porphura) (the purple fish (Murex)), perhaps of Semitic origin.  Purpur continued as a parallel form until the fifteenth century and was maintained in the rules of heraldry until well into the nineteenth.  The verb purple (to tinge or stain with purple) was from the noun and emerged circa 1400.  The earlier form was purpured, a past-participle adjective.  The adjective purplish (somewhat purple, tending to purple) was from the noun and dates from the 1560s.  Purple is a noun, verb & adjective, purpled & purpling are verbs, purplish, purpler, purply & purplest are adjectives and purpleness is a noun; the noun plural is purples.

1974 Triumph Stag in magenta.  Some of the shades of brown, beige, orange and such used in the 1970s by British Leyland are not highly regarded but some were quite striking.

The rhetorical use in reference to “the splendid; the gaudy” began as a description of garments (classically imperial regalia) and since the mid-eighteenth century, as “purple prose” of writing.  In US political discourse and commentary, purple has since been used (often in graphical or cartographic form) to indicating the sectional or geographical spaces in which the increasing division of the country into red (Republican) and blue (Democratic) was less apparent.  That this came into widespread use only by around 2004 is because the use of red & blue by the US news media became (more or less) standardized only by the 1990s, use have begun circa 1980, something without any relationship to the linking of the colors (red=left; blue=right) traditional in other parts of the English-speaking world.  Other words used to describe purplish shades include lavender, mauve, amethyst, violet (with many sub-types) lilac, orchid, indigo, mulberry, plum, eggplant (aubergine seems rare but is used in commerce), fuchsia, heliotrope, periwinkle, purpureus & thistle and while many directly reference the flowers of plants, one curiosity is magenta: It was so called because the dye of that shade was created at the time of the Battle of Magenta (1559) in which French and Sardinian forces defeated those of the Austrians.  Purple is widely used in zoology and botany to create common names of species to some extent colored purple.

Purple patch: 1970 Dodge Challenger (440 Six-Pack) in Plum Crazy (left) and 1971 Plymouth Hemi ‘Cuda in In Violet) (clone; right).

Chrysler had some history in the coining of fanciful names for colors dating from the psychedelic era of the late 1960s when the choices included Plum Crazy, In-Violet, Tor Red, Sub Lime, Sassy Grass, Panther Pink, Moulin Rouge, Top Banana, Lemon Twist & Citron Yella.  Although it may be an industry myth, the story told was that Plum Crazy & In-Violet (lurid shades of purple) were late additions because the killjoy board refused to sign-off on Statutory Grape.  The lurid colors soon disappeared, not only because fashions change but because at the time they depended on the use of lead which was banned from paint in the early 1970s.  Not until the early twenty-first century did manufacturers perfect ways economically to replicate the earlier colors without using lead.

Salma Hayek in eye-catching purple,  Cannes Film Festival May 2015.

In idiomatic use, purple is popular.  One “born into the purple” was literally one of royal or exalted birth although it’s now often used even of those from families somewhere in the upper middle class.  The “purple death” was hospital slang for Spanish influenza and it was an allusion to the cyanosis which, because of the difficulty breathing, which would turn the skin purple.  In the early post-war years “purple death” was also used to describe a cheap Italian wine.   The phrase “once in a purple moon” was a variation of “once in a blue moon” and some dictionaries include an entry, apparently only for the purpose of assuring us that not only is it extinct but it may never have been in common use.  “Purple bacteria” (the form only ever used in the plural) are a proteobacteria which produce their own food using photosynthesis; they are all classed as purple, even though some are orange, red or brown.  In the analogue-era world of the phone phreaks (hackers who used the telephone networks for other than the intended purpose), a “purple box” was a device which added a hold facility to a telephone line.  It was an allusion to the general term “black box” used in engineering and electronics to describe small devices with specific purposes; not all “purple boxes” were actually purple.  “Purple gas” was a Canadian term which described the gas (motor spirit; petrol) colored with a purple dye to indicate it was sold subject to a lower rate of taxation and for use only in agriculture and not on public roads.  Anyone found using “purple gas” beyond a farm could be charged and many countries use similar methods though the dye is not always purple.  “Purple gold” was a synonym of amethyst gold (a brittle alloy of gold and aluminium, purple in colour).

1994 Porsche 911 Turbo 3.6  (964) in Amethyst Metallic over Classic Gray.

A “purple passage” (also as “purple prose”) was any form of writing thought showy or overwrought, using an exaggerated array of literary devices and effects or marked by excessively ornate rhetoric.  It was a criticism but the later “purple patch” which describes any particular good period or performance (in any context) was wholly positive.  The “purple pill” was an advertising slogan used by a pharmaceutical company but unlike “little blue pill” (Viagra), it never entered the vernacular.  “Purple plague” has specific meanings in chemistry and electronics (relating to a chemical reaction which produces an undesirable purple compound) but a more amusing use is by Roman Catholic bishops noting a unwanted number of monsignors (who wear a purple sash) in their dioceses, sent there by the Vatican.  In US politics a “purple state” is a “swing state”, one which, depending on this and that, may vote either Republican (red) or Democrat (blue).  The “purple star” was the symbol worn by Jehovah's Witnesses in concentration camps in Nazi Germany (1933-1945), one of a number of color-coded patches, the best-known of which was the yellow Jewish star.  The Jehovah's Witnesses were an interesting case in that uniquely among the camp inmates, they could at any time leave if they were prepared to sign a declaration denying their religious beliefs.  In international air-traffic management, a “purple zone” (also “purple airway”) describes a route reserved for an aircraft on which a member of a royal family is flying.  In US military use, the “Purple Heart” dating from 1932, is still awarded to service personnel wounded in combat.  It’s origin was a decoration in purple cloth first awarded in 1782 which came to be known as the “wound stripe”.  In the mid 1960s, “purple haze” was slang for LSD (Lysergic acid diethylamide, a psychedelic drug with a long history verging on academic respectability before becoming a popular hallucinogenic, users clipping the term to "acid"); it was later repurposed for various strains of weed.

Lindsay Lohan, admirer of all things purple.

The dye tyrian purple (all the evidence suggests it would now be thought a crimson), was produced around Tyre and was prized as dye for royal garments, hence the figurative use in the sixteenth century of purple for “imperial or regal power” (it was also the color of mourning or penitence among royalty or the upper reaches of the clergy).  Tyrian purple (also known as shellfish purple) was for long periods the most expensive substance in Antiquity (often (by weight) three times the value of gold, the exchange rate set by a Roman edict issued in 301 AD.  By the fifteenth century when the intricate process to extract and process the dye was lost, Tyrian purple had for millennia been variously a symbol of strength, sovereignty and money and its use had spread from the Classical world to Southern Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia and was so associated with the civilization of the Phoenicians (the color named after their city-state Tyre) that they were known as the “purple people”.  What many didn’t know was that the dye associated with the illustrious came not from a gemstone or some vivid coral but from the slimy mucous of sea snails in the Murex family.  Debate continues about what must have been the process used in extraction and production although, given many factories and artisans were involved over the years, there may have been many variations of the method.

2001 Lotus Esprit V8 (twin-turbo) in Deep Purple Metallic over Magnolia leather.

It was in 1453 when the Byzantine capital Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) fell to the Ottomans that the knowledge of Tyrian purple was lost, something of a footnote to the end of the Eastern Roman Empire but still a loss.  Then, the infamously smelly dyeworks of the old city were the hub of purple production although, after a series of punitive taxes, the Catholic Church had lost control of the pigment which is the origin of the pope’s decision that red would become the new symbol of Christian power and this was adopted for the garb of cardinals; the story that the vivid red symbolized the blood cardinals mush be prepared to spill in the defense of their pope was just a cover story although one obviously approved of by the pontiff.

Beginning in 1968 with Shades of Deep Purple (left), the rock band Deep Purple sometimes used purple-themed album cover art and may have wished they'd stuck with that for their eponymous third album (1969).  The original cover (centre), featuring a fragment of one panel of the triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights (1490-1510) by Hieronymus Bosch (circa 1450-1516), was declared "demonic" by the US distributors so an alternative needed hastily be arranged and whether because of the tight schedule or just wanting to play it safe, they stuck to purple (right).  They'd earlier had a similar difficulty with their US label when releasing their second album (The Book of Taliesyn (1968)), the objection that time that one song title (Wring That Neck) was "too violent" (it was an instrumental piece and the reference was to a technique used with the neck of a guitar but it was anyway changed to Hard Road).  Times have changed.

In literary theory, “to etiolate” a text is to remove or revise the “purple passages”.  In literature, purple passages are those sections of a text which are overly elaborate, flowery, or extravagant in style, often prioritizing ornate or decorative language and the use of needlessly long words, the meaning of which is often obscure.  Such writing is thought a literary self-indulgence or a mere pretentious display of knowledge; grandiose execution at the expense of clarity, the usual critique being “style over substance”.  The phrase is almost certainly derived from the historic use of the once rare and expensive purple dye being restricted (actually by statute or edict in some places) to royalty and even when availability became wider, the association with luxury & wealth continued.  The idea has long been a tool of critics, Roman lyric poet Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus, 65-8 BC) in his Ars Poetica (The Art of Poetry, 19 BC) referring disapprovingly to the purpureus… pannus (a purple piece of cloth), the irrelevant insertion of a grandiloquent or melodramatic passage into a work.  Horace thought this disruptive at best and absurd at worst and “purple passages” continues to be used to describe writing which is needlessly ornate, florid and usually discordantly incongruous.  Used almost always pejoratively (although there do seem to be some admirers), comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) might have called such flourishes “formalism”.

Melon

Melon (pronounced mel-uhn)

(1) Any of various plants of two cucurbitaceous vines (the gourd family) including the watermelon, muskmelon et al.  Variations include Genus Cucumis (various musk melons, including honeydew, cantaloupes, and horned melon); Genus Citrullus (watermelons and others); Genus Benincasa (winter melon); Genus Momordica (a bitter melon)

(2) The fruit of any of these plants.

(3) A color ranging between a medium crimson and a deep pink, noted for the orange tinge.

(4) In zoology, the visible upper portion of the head of a surfacing whale or dolphin, including the beak, eyes, and blowhole (a mass of adipose tissue used to focus and modulate vocalizations).

(5) In the slang of (mostly North American) financial markets, an especially large additional dividend (often in the form of stock) distributed to stockholders (often as “cut a melon”).

(6) By extension, any windfall of money to be divided among specified beneficiaries.

(7) In slang, the breasts of the human female (almost always in the plural).

(8) In slang, the head; the skull.

(9) In slang, a derogatory term for members of a green political party, or similar environmental groups (rare and mostly Australia & New Zealand).

1350–1400: From the Middle English meloun & melon (herbaceous, succulent trailing annual plant or its sweet, edible fruit), from the Old Portuguese (via the thirteenth century Old French melon) melon, from the Late Latin melonem & mēlōn- (stem of mēlō and a shortening of mēlopepō (the “gourd apple”, a large apple-shaped melon)), from the Ancient Greek μηλοπέπων (mēlopépōn) (large apple-shaped melon), the construct being μηλο (mêlo(n)) (apple) + πέπων (pépōn) (ripe), from πέπτω (péptō) (to ripen).  Confusingly for historians seeking to reconstruct the recipes of Antiquity the Latin melopeponem was a kind of pumpkin while the Greek mēlopepon (gourd-apple) was applied to several kinds of gourds bearing sweet fruit, the origin of that in the noun use of pépōn (ripe) distinguishing the fruit on the vine ready for harvest from those yet to ripen.  As a modifier, melon is appended as appropriate (based on color, shape, diet, environmental niche, habitat etc) including melon beetle, melon cactus, Melon rugose mosaic virus, melon thistle & melon-headed.  The best known is probably the watermelon, dating from the 1610s and so named for their high content of water-like juice.  The more pleasing term in French is French melon d'eau.  Melon is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is melons.

Being prolific and undemanding to grow, melons were among the earliest plants domesticated and in Greek, “melon” was used in a generic way for many foreign fruits, a fate which would also befall apple, thus the naming of the pineapple and in some Old English texts, cucumbers are referred to as eorþæppla (literally "earth-apples", the deductive process which produced the French pomme de terre (potato (literally “earth-apple”, the French pomme from the Latin pomum (apple; fruit)).  Apple was from the Old English æppel (apple; any kind of fruit; fruit in general), from the from Proto-Germanic ap(a)laz (source also of the Old Saxon, Old Frisian & Dutch appel, the Old Norse eple, the Old High German apful & the German Apfel), from the primitive Indo-European ab(e)l- (apple), (source also of the Gaulish avallo (fruit), the Old Irish ubull, the Lithuanian obuolys, & the Old Church Slavonic jabloko (apple)) by etymologists caution original sense of these and their relationship(s) to which is now understood as “an apple” is uncertain.  In Middle English, as late as the seventeenth century (even the earliest compliers of recipe books aren’t always explicit so some reverse-engineering based on supposition has been undertaken), it was a generic term for all fruit other than berries but including nuts (such as Old English fingeræppla (dates (literally "finger-apples) and the late fourteenth century Middle English appel of paradis (banana (literally apple of paradise)).

The twenty-first century judgment of Paris: Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears & Paris Hilton reprise Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite, New York City, 29 November 2006.  The car was a Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren (C199).

That generality of meaning saw “apple” named as the fruit with which the serpent tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden, creating the original sin with which we’ve all since been damned, women especially since the Bible says it was all her fault.  However, the “fruit of the forbidden tree” was unspecified in the original texts of the Book of Genesis but despite the wishful thinking of a few, in biblical scholarship there’s no support for the notion the fruit was even hinted at being an appel of paradis, however appropriate a nice plump banana might seem, given the context.  Nor is the forbidden fruit explicitly mentioned in the Holy Quran but according to traditional Islamic commentaries it was not an apple but wheat.  The Prophet may not have been concerned but in Greek mythology there was the μῆλον τῆς Ἔριδος (Golden Apple of Discord) in the story of the Judgment of Paris which the goddess Ἔρις (Eris) (Strife), tossed in the midst of the feast of the gods at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis as a prize of beauty, thus sparking a vanity-fueled dispute among Hera, Athena and Aphrodite which ultimately triggered the Trojan War.  Eris was the goddess of chaos and discord who (perhaps unsurprisingly), having not received a wedding invitation, was miffed and inscribed kallisti (To the prettiest one) on her “wedding gift” handing it to Πάρις (Paris, AKA Ἀλέξανδρος (Aléxandros) (Alexander), the son of King Priam and Queen Hecuba of Troy) who was told to choose the goddess he found most beautiful.  Judging what turned out to be one of Greek mythology's more significant beauty contests, Paris chose Aphrodite, offending Hera and Athena, the most famous consequence of their feud being the Trojan War.  Tragedy did thereafter stalk the marriage of Peleus and Thetis; of their seven sons, the only one to survive beyond infancy was Achilles.

Cookmaid with Still Life of Vegetables and Fruit (circa 1620-1625), oil on canvas by Sir Nathaniel Bacon (1585–1627).

Beginning probably in Holland in the early seventeenth century and apparently first painted by Pieter Aertsen (circa 1533-circa 1573) "cookmaid and market scenes" was a genre in painting which combined representations of produce and kitchens with themes often borrowed from the New Testament.  Two other of Sir Nathaniel's works in this vein are known still to exist: Cookmaid with Still Life of Game & Cookmaid with Still Life of Birds, both featuring healthy young ladies and there is obviously some artistic license in Cookmaid with Still Life of Vegetables and Fruit given that although every piece of produce depicted was at the time grown somewhere in England, not all simultaneously would have been in season.  Sir Nathaniel's lengthy title was too much for many and the painting has often been referred to as "Maid with Melons".  This slang use of melons is listed by many dictionaries as “vulgar” or “mildly vulgar” but does travel with the vague respectability of a classical origin: In Antiquity the plural of the Greek melon (μῆλα) (mela) was used for “a girl's breasts”.

Juicy Melons, Euston Station, London. 

A cantaloupe as one would appear in most of the world (left) and a rockmelon down under (right).

Globalization has to some extent standardized in the English language spellings and meanings which once were disparate, sometimes reversing the trend towards diversity which was noted as one of the linguistic effects of the British Empire, especially in India under the Raj where the British pillaged the local languages with only slightly less enthusiasm than they showed for gold and diamonds.  However, the names of food seem often resistant to change, presumably most often where forms are well-established and supplied by local production.  Thus what is in some places eggplant is elsewhere the aubergine.  It’s also a melon matter because in Australia, what most of the world knows as the cantaloupe (from the French cantaloup, from the Italian place name Cantalupo, a former Papal summer estate near Rome, where the melons were first grown after being introduced to Europe from the Middle East), is called the rockmelon (occasionally rock-melon) and the antipodean quirkiness is not unique, the cantaloupe in some places call the “sweet melon” or “Crenshaw melon” while in South Africa where it’s not uncommon to see fruit-stalls side-by-side, one might be selling cantaloupes and the other spanspeks (from the Afrikaans Spaanse spek (literally “Spanish bacon”)).  The Australian use, once deconstructed, does make sense in that a cantaloupe does resemble some rocks but the case seems not compelling and cantaloupe is a wonderful word.  Visiting foodies will be gratified Australians follow the rest of the world when it comes to the honeydew (or honey-dew) melon, the name from the late sixteenth century honeydew (sticky sweet substance found in small drops on trees and plants), a replication of the formations in the Dutch honigdaauw and the German Honigthau.  The melon was first named in 1916 when selective breeding produced a cross between the cantaloupe and a melon native to southern African.

Floccinaucinihilipilification

Floccinaucinihilipilification (pronounced flok-suh-naw-suh-nahy-hil-uh-pil-uh-fi-key-shuhn)

(1) The estimation of something as valueless.

(2) The act or habit of describing or regarding something as unimportant, of having no value or being worthless.

1735–1745: Apparently a coinage by pupils of Latin at England’s Eton College (a public (ie private)), the intent jocular but also something of an exercise in the pleonastic and tautological, the construct built (with the odd phonetic substitution or insertion) from the Latin words floccus (a wisp) + naucum (a trifle) +‎ nihilum (nothing) +‎ pilus (a hair) + -fication.  The elements (floccī + naucī + nihilī + pilī) all conveyed the notion “of little or no value, trifling”.  The -fication suffix was an alternative form of -ification, from the Middle English -ificacioun (ending on words generally borrowed whole from Old French), from the Old French -ification, from the Latin -ficātiō, a noun ending which appears on action nouns formed using the suffix -tiō (the English -tion) from verbs ending in -ficō (English -ify).   It was used to convey the idea of “the process of becoming” and was used in words of French or Latin origin, but in the last half-century the forms have become highly productive in English and the choice between -fication & -ification tends to be dictated by the resultant ease of pronunciation although when applying the suffix -ation to a verb ending in -ify, -ification is used instead of the expected -ifiation.  Modern forms like nerdification (the process of making or becoming nerdy) and hipsterfication (the process of making or becoming a hipster or characteristic of hipsters) have proliferated.  Floccinaucinihilipilification is a noun, floccinaucinihilipilificatious is an adjective and floccinaucinihilipilificate, floccinaucinihilipilificated & floccinaucinihilipilificating are verbs; the noun plural is floccinaucinihilipilifications (which some deny exists).

Modern reprint of the Eton Latin Grammar (1887) by Arthur Campbell Ainger (1841-1919).

Bored or baffled pupils in Latin class presumably coined many fake Latin words and it’s the longest, funniest or most vulgar which tended to survive.  At a hefty (by the conventions of English and most languages) 29 letters, floccinaucinihilipilification certainly is long and also enjoys the distinction of being the longest “non-technical” (ie not from medicine, physics etc) word in English although as something used to convey meaning (the very purpose of language), knowing the word does in itself seem floccinaucinihilipilificatious and for those who want more, that adjectival back-formation is lengthier still at a 30 character count.  Both trump that other schoolboy favorite antidisestablishmentarianism (opposition to the withdrawal of state support or recognition from an established (state) church) which manages with 28 and attempts to claim the noun antidisestablishmentarianismist (31) exists have always been dismissed.  Etymologists believe the inventive pupils were inspired by a line which appears in various editions of William Lily's (circa 1468–1522) Latin grammars, one of which was the Eton Latin Grammar in which was listed a number of nouns commonly used in the genitive case with some verbs like pendo and facio expressing the idea of evaluating something as worthless.

Floccinaucinihilipilification: Trends of use.

To say the word is rare is stating the obvious but statistically, use spiked after the spread of the internet and that’s because of all the lists of long, bizarre or obscure words, Google’s ngrams increasing the count every time another one was created or shared.  Because of the way Google harvests data for their ngrams, they’re not literally a tracking of the use of a word in society but can be usefully indicative of certain trends, (although one is never quite sure which trend(s)), especially over decades.  As a record of actual aggregate use, ngrams are not wholly reliable because: (1) the sub-set of texts Google uses is slanted towards the scientific & academic and (2) the technical limitations imposed by the use of OCR (optical character recognition) when handling older texts of sometime dubious legibility (a process AI should improve).  Where numbers bounce around, this may reflect either: (1) peaks and troughs in use for some reason or (2) some quirk in the data harvested.

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

Despite appearing on all those lists, by the twenty-first century, actual (ie “real”) use had been so infrequent that to call it “archaic” was misleading but indisputably it was old and that had much appeal for Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg (b 1969) an English politician who between 2010-2024 sat in the House of Commons, rising to become Lord President of the Council and later a member of cabinet in the memorable administration of Boris Johnson (b 1964; UK prime-minister 2019-2022).  As one who deliberately affects an archaic style, Sir Jacob’s amused colleagues soon dubbed him “the honourable member for the eighteenth century” and he made plain his disdain for much of what modernity has delivered (the EU (European Union), the Labour Party, working class people with ideas above their station, pop music etc) and in gratitude for his stellar service, Sir Jacob was created a Knight Bachelor in Mr Johnson’s resignation honours list (which was as entertaining as any in living memory).  Because the Knight Bachelor is the most ancient of the UK’s many classes of knighthood, that would have pleased him but it’s also low in the pecking order (the “order of precedence” which dictates critical things like where one gets to sit (and, more to the point, next to whom) at certain dinners, church services and such) so that would not.  It ranks below all the knighthoods which are part of the organized orders of chivalry (the Garter, the Thistle, the Bath, the Star of India et al) and unlike the chivalric orders, does not confer any entitlement to the use of post-nominal letters, the form “KB” not used (except in historic reference) after 1815 when knighthoods in the order of the Bath (1725) were reorganized as Knight Grand Cross (GCB) & Knight Commander (KCB).  Still, he picked up the right to be styled “the honorable” when his father (William Rees-Mogg, 1928-2012) was in 1988 created a life peer and when in 2019 he was appointed to the Privy Council, he gained for life the style “The Right Honourable” so there was that.

The Right Honourable Sir Jacob Rees Mogg PC, attending the funeral of Elizabeth II (1926-2022; Queen of the UK and other places, 1952-2022), London, 19 September 2019.

In 2012, Sir Jacob spoke the word “floccinaucinihilipilification” in a debate in the House of Commons, his topic being what he asserted was in the nation a common opinion of the EU and, helpfully, told the house it meant “the habit of regarding something as worthless”.  The 29 letter monster remains the longest word ever to appear in Hansard (a record of parliamentary proceedings) although someone did manage to use pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis (a factitious 45 letter creation said to mean “a lung disease caused by inhalation of very fine silica dust usually found in volcanos”) when appearing before a select committee (not being on the floor of the house it didn’t make the Hansard).  An opportunist extension of the medical term pneumonoconiosis, it was coined during the proceedings of the National Puzzlers' League convention in 1935 in an attempt to create English’s longest word but was dismissed by dictionaries as fake, clinicians and textbooks still referring to the disease as pneumonoconiosis, pneumoconiosis, or silicosis.  British dictionaries may feel compelled to include antidisestablishmentarianism but many overseas publications do not, on the basis there’s hardly any record of its use except in lists of long words which some editors treat as lexicographical freak shows.  Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary lists the longest as electroencephalographically, also from the physician’s diagnostic tool box.