IIII

IIII (pronounced fawr (U) or fohr (non-U))

A translingual form, an alternative form of IV: the Roman numeral representing four (4), the other known forms being iv, iiii & iiij

Circa 500 BC: The Roman numeral system spread as Roman conquest expanded and remained widely used in Europe until from circs 1300 it was replaced (for most purposes) with the more adaptable Hindu-Arabic system (including the revolutionary zero (0) which remains in use to this day.

IIII as a representation where the value four is involved has long been restricted to the value 4.  To avoid numbers becoming too cumbersome, the Roman system always used subtraction when a smaller numeral precedes a larger numeral so the number 14 would be represented as XIV instead of XIIII.  The convention which emerged was that a numeral can precede only another numeral which is less than or equal to ten times the value of the smaller so I can precede only (and thus be subtracted from) V (five) & X (ten).  However, these “rules” didn’t exist during Antiquity and weren’t (more or less) standardized until well into the medieval period; it’s thus not unusual to find old documents where 9 is represented as VIIII instead of IX.  The practical Romans, unlike the Greeks for whom abstraction was a calling, were little concerned with the concepts of pure mathematics, such as number theory or geometric proofs, and other abstract ideas, devoted instead to utilitarian purposes such as financial accounting, keeping military records and building things.

The numeral system had to be manageable to make simple calculations like addition and subtraction so it was attractive to make the text strings conveniently short: 44 as XLIV obvious preferable to XXXXIIII.  Although its limitations seem obvious to modern eyes, given the demands of the times, the system worked remarkably well for almost two millennia despite the largest numeral being M (1000).  It was silly to contemplate writing a string of 1000 M’s to indicate a million (presumably not a value then often used) so the Romans concocted a bar (the vinculum) which, when it appeared above a numeral, denoted a multiplier of 1000: MMMM (6000) could thus appear as V̄Ī and a million as M̄.  Compared with the Hindu-Arabic system, it was a fudged but one which for centuries proved serviceable.

Where Roman numbers are occasionally still used (book prefaces & introductions, some aeroplanes & automobiles and charmingly, some software), the number four is almost always represented by IV rather than IIII.  One exception to this however is watch & clock faces where the use of IIII outnumbers IV, regardless of the cost of the device.  Watchmakers have provided may explanations for the historical origin of this practice, the most popular of which dates from Antiquity: Because “I” stood for the “J” and “V” for the “U”, IV would be read as JU and thus Jupiter, an especially venerated Roman god, Jupiter Optimus Maximus being the king of all gods, chief of the pantheon and protector of ancient Rome.  The suggestion is that invoking the name of Jupiter for such a banal purpose would be thought offensive if not actually blasphemous.  Thus IIII it became.

Lindsay Lohan wearing 19mm (¾ inch) Cartier Tank Americaine in 18 karat white gold with a quartz movement and a silver guilloche dial with Roman numerals including the traditional IIII.  The Cartier part-number is B7018L1.

There’s the notion to that the convention arose just because of one of those haphazard moments in time by which history sometimes is made.  The appearance of IIII was said to be the personal preference of Louis XIV (1638–1715; le Roi Soleil (the Sun King), King of France 1643-1715), the Sun King apparently issuing an instruction (though there’s no evidence it was ever a formal decree) that IIII was the only appropriate way to write the number four, watchmakers ever since still tending to comply.  Whether Louis XIV wished to retain some exclusivity in the IV which was part of “his” XIV isn’t known and it may be he simply preferred the look of IIII.  Despite the belief of some, it’s anyway wrong to suggest IIII is wrong and IV right.  The design of the IIII was based upon four outstretched fingers which surely had for millennia been the manner in which the value of 4 was conveyed in conversation and V denoted 5 in tribute to the shape the hand formed when the thumb was added.  The IV notation came later and because it better conformed with the conventions used for writing bigger numbers, came in medieval times to be thought correct; it was thus adopted by the Church, becoming the “educated” form and that was that.

Not all agree with those romantic tales however, the German Watch Museum noting that in scholarly, ecclesiastical and daily use, IIII was widely used for a millennia, well into the nineteenth century, while the more efficient “IV” didn’t appear with any great frequency until circa 1500.  The museum argues that the watch and clock-makers concerns may have been readability and aesthetics rather than any devotion to historic practice, IIII having display advantages in an outward-facing arrangement relative to the centre of the dial (ie partially upside down, such as on wall, tower or cuckoo clocks), any confusion between IV (4) & VI (6) eliminated.  Also, a watch, while a functional timepiece, is also decorative and even a piece of jewellery so aesthetics matter, the use of III rendering the dial symmetrically balanced because 14 individual characters exist on each side of the dial and the IIII counterbalances the opposite VIII in the manner IX squares off against III.  So there’s no right or wrong about IIII & IV but there are reasons for the apparent anomaly of the more elegant IV appearing rarely on the dials of luxury watches.

Homonym

Homonym (pronounced hom-uh-nim)

(1) In phonetics, a word pronounced the same as another but differing in meaning, whether spelled the same way or not, as heir and air; a homophone.

(2) In phonetics, a word of the same written form as another but of different meaning and usually origin, whether pronounced the same way or not; a homograph.

(3) In phonetics, a word that is both a homophone and a homograph, that is, exactly the same as another in sound and spelling but different in meaning.

(4) A namesake (a person with the same name as another) (obsolete).

(5) In taxonomy, a name given to a species or genus (that should be unique) that has already been assigned to a different species or genus and that is thus rejected.

1635–1645: The construct was homo- +‎ -onym.  From the French homonyme and directly from the Latin homōnymum, from the Greek homṓnymon, neuter of homṓnymos (homonymous) (of the same name).  Homo was from the Ancient Greek ὁμός (homós) (same).  The –onym suffix was a creation for the international scientific vocabulary, a combining from the New Latin, from the Ancient Greek ὄνυμα (ónuma), Doric and Aeolic dialectal form of ὄνομα (ónoma) (name), from the primitive Indo-European root no-men- (name); the related form –onymy also widely used.

For a word which some insist has a narrow definition, it’s used by many to mean quite different things, the related forms being (1) homograph which is a word that has the same spelling as another word but has a different sound and a different meaning (such as bass which can be wither “a low, deep sound” or “a type of fish”) & (2) homophone which is a word that has the same sound as another word but is spelled differently and has a different meaning (such as to, two & too).  Homograph and homophone are uncontested but homonym is used variously either to mean (1) a word that is spelled like another but has a different sound and meaning (a homograph), (2) a word that sounds like another but has a different spelling and meaning (a homophone) or (3) a word that is spelled and pronounced like another but has a different meaning (a homograph & homophone).  According to the purists, a homonym must be both a homograph and a homophone and prescriptive dictionaries still tend in this direction but the descriptive volumes (usually while noting the strict construction), acknowledge that as used in modern English, a homonym can be a homograph or a homophone.  The sage advice seems to be (1) to stick to the classics and use all three words in their strict sense, (2) maintain consistency in use and (3) don’t correct the more permissive (on the Christian basis of “forgive them for they know not what they do”).

Crooked Hillary Clinton and the crooked spire of the Church of St Mary and All Saints, Chesterfield, Derbyshire, England.  Crooked has two meanings and pronunciations but is the one word used in two senses and thus not homonymic.  Crooked (pronounced krookt) is the past tense of the verb crook (bend or curve out of shape), from the Old English crōcian (to crook, to bend) which was cognate with Danish kroget (crooked; bent) whereas crooked (pronounced lrook-id) is an adjective meaning "bent or not straight" and may be used literally or figuratively to describe someone untrustworthy or dishonest.  Crooked is thus also an example of a hetronym (same spellings with different pronunciations and meanings

Adding to the murkiness, Henry Fowler (1858-1933) noted in Modern English Usage (1926) that some confusion has long clouded homonym and synonym, something he blamed on the “loose” meaning of the latter, explaining that homonyms are “separate words happen to be identical in form” while synonyms exist as separate words which happen to mean the same thing”.  However, at this point an etymological layer intrudes, Fowler noting “pole” in the sense of “a stake or shaft” is a native English word whereas when used to mean “the terminal point of an axis” the origins lie in the Greek.  Rather than one, “pole” is thus two separate words but being identical in form are thought homonyms.  By contrast “cat” the feline and “cat” as a clipping of the Admiralty’s flogging device “cat o' nine tails” “although identical in form and meaning different things are not separate words but the one used in two senses and thus not homonymic.

Lindsay Lohan on the couch, sofa, chesterfield or settee, depending on one’s view.

Layers attach also to synonyms, a word used anyway with notorious sloppiness, true synonyms (separate words identical in meaning in the context in which they’re applied) are actually rare compared with pairs or sets frequently cited, many of which enjoy only a partial equivalence of meaning.  The imprecise use isn’t necessarily bad and often is essential for poetic or literary reasons but technically, synonyms should be separate words identical in denotation (what they reference) and connotation (what they mean); pure synonyms may thus be interchanged with no effect but such pairs or sets are rare although in technical fields (IT & various flavors of engineering) they have in recent decades became more numerous.  However, even when words satisfy Henry Fowler’s standards, nuances drawn from beyond etymology and phonetics can lend a layer of meaning which detract from the purity of the synonymousness.  Sofa & couch for example are often used interchangeably and regarded by most as synonymous but to a student of the history of furniture, because couch is from the French noun couche (a piece of furniture with no arms used for lying) from the verb meaning “to lie down”, it differs from a sofa (a long, upholstered seat usually with arms and a back).  That’s fine but “sofa” is used by some as a class-identifier, being the “U” (upper-class) form while couch, settee and such are “non-U”.

Canthus

Canthus (pronounced kan-thuhs)

The angle or corner on each side of the eye, formed by the natural junction of the upper and lower lids; there are two canthi on each eye: the medial canthus (closer to the nose) and the lateral canthus (closer to the ear).

1640–1650: From Ancient Greek κανθός (kanthós) (corner of the eye) (and also an alternative spelling of cantus (in music, sung, recited, sounded, blew, chanted etc)), which became conflated the New Latin canthus, from the Classical Latin cantus (the (iron) rim of a wheel)).  The term describing the “iron rim of a wheel” was ultimately of Gaulish origin, from the Proto-Celtic kantos (corner, rim) and related to the Breton kant (circle), the Old Irish cétad (round seat) and the Welsh cant (rim, edge).  The Greek form was borrowed by Latin as canthus and with that spelling it entered English.  In the medieval way of such things, canthus and cantus became conflated, possibly under the influence or regional variations in pronunciation but some etymologists have noted there was tendency among some scribes and scholars to favor longer Latin forms, for whatever reason more letters being thought better than fewer.  The most familiar descendent in music is the canto (a description of a form of division in composition with a surprisingly wide range of application).  Canthus is a noun and canthal is an adjective; the noun plural is canthi (pronounced kan-thahy).

One word in English which has long puzzled etymologists is the late fourteenth century cant (slope, slant) which appeared first in Scottish texts, apparently with the sense “edge, brink”.  All dictionaries list it as being of uncertain origin and the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) notes words identical in form and corresponding in sense are found in many languages including those from Teutonic, Slavonic, Romanic & Celtic traditions.  Rare in English prior to the early seventeenth century, the meaning “slope, slanting or tilting position” had been adopted by at least 1847 and may long have been in oral use.  The speculation about the origin has included (1) the Old North French cant (corner) which may be related to the Middle Low German kante or the Middle Dutch kant, (2) the New Latin canthus, from the Classical Latin cantus (the (iron) rim of a wheel), (3) the Russian kutu (corner) and (4) the Ancient Greek κανθός (kanthós) (corner of the eye).  To all of these there are objections are the source remains thus uncertain.

The metrics of the attractiveness of women

PinkMirror is a web app which helps users optimize their facial aesthetics, using an artificial intelligence (AI) engine to deconstruct the individual components an observer’s brain interprets as a whole.  Because a face is for these purposes a collection of dimensions & curves with certain critical angles determined by describing an arc between two points, it means things can be reduced to metrics, and the interaction of these numbers can used to create a measure of attractiveness.

Positive, (left), neutral (centre) & negative (right) eye canthal tilt.

Perhaps the most interesting example of the components is the eye canthal tilt, a positive tilt regarded as more attractive than a negative.  The eye canthal tilt is the angle between the internal corner of the eyes (medial canthus) and the external corner of the eyes (lateral canthus) and is a critical measure of periorbital (of, pertaining to all which exists in the space surrounding the orbit of the eyes (including skin, eyelashes & eyebrows) aesthetics.  The eye canthal tilt can be negative, neutral, or positive and is defined thus:

Positive: Medial canthus tilt between +5 and +8^o below the lateral canthus.

Neutral: Medial canthus and lateral canthus are in a horizontal line.

Negative: Medial canthus tilt between -5 to -8^o below the lateral canthus.

Pinkmirror cites academic research which confirms a positive canthal tilt is a “power cue” for female facial attractiveness and while it’s speculative, a possible explanation for this offered by the researchers was linked to (1) palpebral (of, pertaining to, or located on or near the eyelids.) fissure inclination being steeper in children than adults (classifying it thus a neonatal feature) and (2) it developing into something steeper still in females than males after puberty (thus becoming a sexually dimorphic feature).  Pinkmirror notes also that natural selection seems to be operating to support the idea, data from Johns Hopkins Hospital finding that in women, the intercanthal axis averages +4.1 mm (.16 of an inch) or +4^o, the supposition being that women with the advantage of a positive medial canthus tilt are found more attractive so attract more mates, leading to a higher degree of procreation, this fecundity meaning the genetic trait producing the characteristic feature is more frequently seen in the population.  Cosmetic surgeons add another layer to the understanding, explaining the canthal tilt is one of the marker’s of aging, a positive tilt exuding youth, health, and exuberance where as a line tending beyond the negative is associated with aging, this actually literally product of natural processes, the soft tissue gradually descending under the effect of gravity, as aspect of Vogue magazine’s definition of the aging process: “Everything gets bigger, hairier & lower”.

With people, medial canthus tilt is thus an interaction of (1) the roll of the genetic dice and (2) the cosmetic surgeon’s scalpel.  With manufactured items however, designers have some scope to anthropomorphize objects and few visages are as obviously related to a human’s eyes than the headlamps on a car.

The positive, neutral & negative: 1965 Gordon-Keeble GK-1 (left), 1958 Edsel Corsair Hardtop (centre) & 1970 Maserati Ghibli Roadster (right).

When headlamps were almost universally separate circular devices, the creation of a medial canthus tilt really became possible in the mid-1950s after dual units were first made lawful in the US and then rapidly became fashionable.  Overwhelmingly, the designers seemed to prefer the neutral and where a positive tilt was use, it was exaggerated well beyond that found in humans.  Instances of the negative were rare, which would seem to support the findings of attractiveness in humans but they were sometimes seen when hidden headlamps were used and there they were necessitate by the form of the leading edge under which they sat.  The suspicion is that designers found a negative slant acceptable if usually they were hidden from view.

2005 Porsche 911 Turbo S (996) (left), 2016 Ford (Australia) Falcon XR8 (FG) (centre) & 2000 Ferrari 550 Maranello.

As the interest in aerodynamics grew and there were advances in shaping glass and plastic economically to render compound shapes, headlights ceased to be merely round (though rectilinear shapes did start to appear in the 1960s) and took on abstract forms.  The demands of aesthetics however didn’t change and designers tended still to neutral or positive tilts.  Care needed still to be taken however, the derided “poached egg” shape on the 996 generation of the Porsche 911 (1997-2006) not popular with the obsessives who buy the things, their view being each update should remain as devoted to the original (1963) lines as themselves.  One of the closest to a flirtation with a negative tilt showed up on the Ferrari 550 Maranello (1996-2001) and the factory hasn’t repeated the experiment.

Deconstructing Lindsay Lohan

The Pinkmirror app exists to quantify one’s degree of attractiveness.  It’s wholly based on specific dimension and thus as piece of math, is not influenced by skin tone although presumably, its parameters are defined by the (white) western model of what constitutes attractiveness.  Users should therefore work within those limitations but the model would be adaptable, presumably not to the point of being truly cross-cultural but specifics forks could certainly be created to suit any dimensional differences between ethnicities.  Using an industry standard known as the Photographic Canthal Index (PCI), one’s place on Pinkmirror’s index of attractiveness is determined by the interplay of (1) Nose width, (2) Bi-temporal to bi-zygomatic ratio, (3) chin length, (4) chin angle, (5) lower-lip height & (6) eye height.

Lindsay Lohan scored an 8.5 (out of 10), was rated as “beautiful” and found to be “very feminine, with great features of sexual dimorphism”, scoring highly in all facets except lower lip height and eye height.  Her face shape is the heart, distinguished by a broad forehead and cheekbones, narrowing in the lines of down to the jaw-line, culminating in a cute pointy chin.  Pinkmirror say the most attractive face shape for women has been found to be the triangle, scoring about the same as the oval while the heart, round, diamond, rectangle and square are also attractive to a lesser degree.  Within the app, pears and oblongs are described as “not typically seen as attractive” and while the word “ugly” isn’t used, for the unfortunate pears and oblongs, that would seem the implication.

Random

Random (pronounced ran-duhm)

(1) Proceeding, made, or occurring without definite aim, reason, or pattern; lacking any definite plan or prearranged order; haphazard.

(2) In statistics, of or characterizing a process of selection in which each item of a set has an equal probability of being chosen (the random sample); having a value which cannot be determined but only described probabilistically.

(3) Of materials used in building and related constructions, lacking uniformity in size or shape.

(4) Of ashlar (stonework), laid without continuous courses and applied without regularity:

(5) In slang (also clipped to “rando” and some on-line sources insist “randy” is also used), something or someone unknown, unidentified, unexpected or out of place; anything odd or unpredictable (not necessarily a pejorative term and used as both noun & adjective).

(6) In slang, someone unimportant; a person of no consequence (always a pejorative).

(7) In printing, the sloping work surface at the top of a compositor's workbench on which type is composed (also called a bank and use now almost exclusive to the UK).

(8) In mining, the direction of a rake-vein.

(9) Speed, full speed; impetuosity, force (obsolete).

(10) In ballistics, the full range of a bullet or other projectile and thus the angle at which a weapon is tilted to gain maximum range (obsolete).

(11) In computing (as pseudorandom), mimicking the result of random selection.

1650s: From the earlier randon, from the Middle English randoun & raundon, from the Old French randon, a derivative of randir (to run; to gallop) of Germanic origin (related to the Old High German rinnan (to run) (from which Modern French gained randonnée (long walk, hike), from either the Frankish rant (a running) & randiju (a run, race) or the Old Norse rend (a run, race), both from the Proto-Germanic randijō, from rinnaną (run), from the primitive Indo-European r̥-nw- (to flow, move, run).  It was cognate with the Middle Low German uprinden (to jump up) and the Danish rende (to run).  The development of the adjective to mean “having no definite aim or purpose, haphazard, not sent in a special direction” evolved in the 1650s from the mid-sixteenth century phrase “at random” (at great speed) which picked up the fourteenth century sense from the Middle English noun randon & randoun (impetuosity; speed).  In English, the meaning closely mirrored that in the Old French randon (rush, disorder, force, impetuosity), gained from Frankish or other Germanic sources.  The spelling shift in Modern English from -n to –m was not unusual (seldom, ransom et al).  Random is a noun & adjective, randomness & randomosity are nouns, randomize is a verb and randomly is an adverb; the noun plural is randoms.

A “random person” is one variously unknown, unidentified, unexpected or out of place.

In general use, the meanings related to speed (full speed; force, trajectory of delivery etc) faded from use between the fourteenth & seventeenth centuries but persisted in the field of ballistics where “random” described the limit of the range of a bullet or other projectile (thus the angle at which a weapon was tilted to gain the maximum range.  Even that was largely obsolete by the early twentieth century but the idea of the angle being “a random” persists still in pockets in the UK to describe a sloping work surface on which printers compose pages (although few now use physical metal type).  The now familiar twenty-first century slang use can be either pejorative (someone unimportant; a person of no consequence) or neutral tending to the amused (something or someone unknown, unidentified, unexpected or out of place; anything odd or unpredictable).  The modern adoption appears to have its origin in 1980s US college student slang when “a person who does not belong on our dormitory floor” was so described; from this the hint of “inferior, undesirable” was perhaps inevitable.  “Rando” seems to be the standard abbreviation but some on-line sources also list “randy” which would seem to risk confusion or worse.

School lunch social engineering: Some sources recommend parents cut their children’s sandwiches in random ways.  The theory is it helps train their minds to accept change and helps them learn to adapt.

In computing, random access memory (RAM) had since the 1980s become familiar as one of a handful of the critical specifications of a computer (CPU, RAM, drive space) and the origin of the terms dates from IBM’s labs in the early 1950s when it was used to describe a new form of memory which could be read non-sequentially.  The modern RAM used by personal computers, servers, smart phones etc is an evolution from the original memory model; in the world of the early mainframes there was simply storage which could fulfil the functions now performed by both RAM and media like hard disks & solid state drives.  RAM is now a well-known commodity but the companion ROM (Read-Only Memory) is understood only by nerds and only an obsessional few of them give it much thought.  RAM volatile in that the contents are inherently temporary lost when the device is powered-down or re-started; it can thus be thought of as using static electricity for data storage.  That characteristic means it’s fast, affording the most rapid access by the CPU (Central Processing Unit) so is used to hold whatever data is at the time most in demand and that can be parts of the operating system, applications or documents.  ROM is non-volatile and whatever is written to ROM remains even if a device is switched-off; it’s thus used for essential, information like firmware and hardware information.

In mathematics and statistics, random does have precise definitions but in general use it’s used also as a vague synonym for “typical or average”.  To a statistician, the word implies “having unpredictable outcomes to the extent all outcomes are equally probable and if any statistical correlation is found to exist it will be wholly coincidental.  Thus, although all dictionaries list the comparative as more random and the superlative as most random, a statistician will insist these are as absurd as “very unique” although even among mathematicians phrases like “increasingly random” or “tending to randomness” are probably not unknown.  For others, the forms are useful and the colloquial use to mean “apropos of nothing; lacking context; unexpected; having apparent lack of plan, cause or reason” is widely applied to events, even those which to a specialist may not be at all random and may even be predictable.  For most of us, any sub-set of numbers which appears to have no pattern will appear random but mathematicians need to be more precise.  In the strict, technical sense, a true random number set exists only when two conditions are satisfied: (1) the values are uniformly distributed over a defined interval or set and (2) it is impossible to predict future values based on past or present ones.  In the pre-computer age, creating random number lists was challenging and subsequent analysis has found some of the sets created by manual or mechanical means were not truly random although those which were sufficiently large probably were functional for the purposes to which they were put.

“Random news” is something strange, unexpected and often amusing.    

Now, random number generators (RNG) are used and they can exist either in hardware or software and there are two types (1) pseudorandom number generators (PRNG) and true random number generators (TRNG).  A software algorithm, a PRNG emulates a TRNG by mimicking the selection of a value to approximate true randomness, the limitation being the algorithm being based on a distribution (the origin of the term pseudorandom) which can only produce something ultimately deterministic and predictable (although to determine the pattern can demand much computational power).  Relying on a seed number, if that can be isolated, other numbers can be predicted although, if the subset is large, for many purposes, what PRNGs generate is functional.  TRNGs don’t use an algorithm (although their processes can be represented by one) but are instead based on an unpredictable physical variable such as radioactive decay of isotopes, airwave static, or the behaviour of subatomic particles, the latter now favoured for their utterly unpredictable movements, now called “pure randomness”.  So random is the behaviour of subatomic particles that their observation appears to be immune to measurement biases which can (at least in theory) afflict other methods.

Random numbers are important in a number of fields including (1) statistical sampling and experimentation where it’s essential to select a random sample to ensure that the results are representative of the entire population, (2) cryptography where random numbers are used to generate the encryption keys which ensure the security of data and communications, (3) simulation and modelling where there’s a need to replicate real-world scenarios, (4) gaming & gambling where the need exists to create unpredictable outcomes and (5) randomized controlled trials (RCT), notably in medical and scientific research where true randomness is needed to assist in the assessment of the effectiveness of treatments, interventions, or policies.

Acephalous

Acephalous (pronounced ey-sef-uh-luhs)

(1) In zoology, a creature without a head or lacking a distinct head (applied to bivalve mollusks).

(2) In the social sciences, political science & sociology, a system of organisation in a society with no centralized authority (without a leader or ruler), where power is in some way distributed among all or some of the members of the community.

(3) In medicine, as (1) acephalia, a birth defect in which the head is wholly or substantially missing & (2), the congenital lack of a head (especially in a parasitic twin).

(4) In engineering, an internal combustion piston engine without a cylinder head.

(5) In botany, a plant having the style spring from the base, instead of from the apex (as is the case in certain ovaries).

(6) In information & communications technology (ICT), a class of hardware and software (variously headless browser, headless computer, headless server etc) assembled lacking some feature or object analogous with a “head” or “high-level” component.

(7) In prosody, deficient in the beginning, as a line of poetry that is missing its expected opening syllable.

(8) In literature, a manuscript lacking the first portion of the text.

1725-1735: From French acéphale (the construct being acéphal(e) + -ous), from the Medieval Latin acephalous, from the Ancient Greek ἀκέφαλος (aképhalos) (headless), the construct being ἀ- (a-) (not) + κεφαλή (kephalḗ) (head), thus synchronically: a- +‎ -cephalous.  The translingual prefix a- was from the Ancient Greek ἀ- (a-) (not, without) and in English was used to form taxonomic names indicating a lack of some feature that might be expected.  The a- prefix (with differing etymologies) was also used to form words imparting various senses.  Acephalous & acephalic are adjectives, acephalousness, acephalia & acephaly are nouns and acephalously is an adverb; the noun plural is acephali.

In biology (although often literally synonymous with “headless”), it was also used to refer to organisms where the head(s) existed only partially, thus the special use of the comparative "more acephalous" and the superlative "most acephalous", the latter also potentially misleading because it referred to extreme malformation rather than absence (which would be something wholly acephalous).  In biology, the companion terms are anencephalous (without a brain), bicephalous (having two heads), monocephalous (used in botany to describe single-headed, un-branched composite plants) & polycephalous (many-headed).

Acephalous: Lindsay Lohan “headless woman” Halloween costume.

The word’s origins were in botany and zoology, the use in political discussion in the sense of “without a leader” dating from 1751.  The Acephali (plural of acephalus) were a people, said to live in Africa, which were the product of the imagination of the writers of Antiquity, said by both the Greek historian Herodotus (circa 487-circa 425 BC) and Romano-Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (circa 37–circa 100) to have no heads (sometimes removable heads) and Medieval historians picked up the notion in ecclesiastical histories, describing thus (1) the Eutychians (a Christian sect in the year 482 without a leader), (2) those bishops certain clergymen not under regular diocesan control and later a class of levelers in the time of Henry I (circa 1068–1135; King 1100-1135).  The word still sometimes appears when discussing religious orders, denominations (or even entire churches) which reject the notion of a separate priesthood or a hierarchical order including such as bishops, the ultimate evolution of which is popery.

Acephalousness in its age of mass production: Marie Antoinette (1755–1793; Queen Consort of France 1774-1792) kneeling next to her confessor, contemplates the guillotine on the day of her execution, 16 October 1793.  Colorized version of a line engraving with etching, 1815.

In political science, acephalous refers to societies without a leader or ruler in the Western sense of the word but it does not of necessity imply an absence of leadership or structure, just that the arrangements don’t revolve around the one ruler.  Among the best documented examples were the desert-dwelling tribes of West Africa (notably those inhabiting the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast (now Ghana)), the arrangements of which required the British colonial administrators (accustomed to the ways of India under the Raj with its Maharajas and institutionalized caste system) to adjust their methods somewhat to deal with notions such as distributed authority and collective decision making.  That said, acephalous has sometimes been used too freely.  It is inevitably misapplied when speaking of anarchist societies (except in idealized theoretical models) and often misleading if used of some notionally collectivist models which are often conventional leadership models in disguise or variations of the “dictatorship of the secretariat” typified by the early structure of Stalinism.

The Acephalous Commer TS3

A curious cul-de-sac in engineering, Commer’s acephalous TS3 Diesel engine (1954-1972) was a six-cylinder, two-stroke system, the three cylinders in a horizontal layout, each with two pistons with their crowns facing each other, the layout obviating any need for a cylinder head.  The base of each piston was attached to a connecting rod and a series of rockers which then attached to another connecting rod, joined to the single, centrally located crankshaft at the bottom of the block, a departure from other “opposed piston” designs, almost all of which used twin crankshafts.  The TS3 was compact, powerful and light, the power-to-weight ratio exceptional because without components such as a cylinder heads, camshafts or valve gear, internal friction was low and thermal efficiency commendably high, the low fuel consumption especially notable.  In other companies, engineers were attracted to the design but accountants were sceptical and there were doubts reliability could be maintained were capacity significantly increased (the TS3 was 3.3 litres (200 cubic inch)) and when Chrysler purchased Commer in 1967, development ceased although an eight-piston prototype had performed faultlessly in extensive testing.  Production thus ceased in 1972 but although used mostly in trucks, there was also a marine version, many examples of which are still running, the operators maintaining them in service because of the reliability, power and economy (although the exhaust emissions are at the shockingly toxic levels common in the 1960s).

Acephalous information & communications technology (ICT)

A headless computer (often a headless server) is a device designed to function without the usual “head” components (monitor, mouse, keyboard) being attached.  Headless systems are usually administered remotely, typically over a network connection although some still use serial links, especially those emulating legacy systems.  Deployed to save both space and money, numerous headless computers and servers still exist although the availability of KVM (and related) hardware which can permit even dozens of machines to be hard-wired to the one keyboard/mouse/monitor/ combination has curbed their proliferation.

A headless browser is a web browser without a graphical user interface (GUI) and can thus be controlled only be from a command-line interface or with a (usually) automated script, often deployed in a network environment.  Obviously not intended for consumer use, they’re ideal for use in distributed test environments or automating tasks which rely on interaction between web pages.  Until methods of detection improved, headless browsers were a popular way of executing ploys such as credential stuffing, page-view building or automated clicking but there now little to suggest they’re now anymore frequently used as a vector for nefarious activity than conventional browsers with a GUI attached.

Browsing for nerds: Google’s acephalous Headless Chrome.

Headless software is analogous with but goes beyond the concept of a headless computer in that it’s designed specifically to function without not just a GUI or monitor but even the hardware necessary to support the things (notably the video card or port).  Whereas some software will fail to load if no video support is detected, headless software proceeds regardless, either because it’s written without such parameter checking or it includes responses which pass “false positives”, emulating the existence of absent software.  Headless software operated in a specialized (horizontal in terms of industries supplied but vertical in that the stuff exists usually in roles such as back-to-front-end comms on distributed servers) niche, the advantage being the two ends can remain static (as some can be for years) while the bridge between the two remains the more maintenance intensive application programming interface (API), the architecture affording great flexibility in the software stack.

Macaronic

Macaronic (pronounced mak-uh-ron-ik)

(1) A text composed of or characterized by Latin words mixed with vernacular words or non-Latin words given Latin endings (known in literary theory as the “macaronic verse”).

(2) In latter-day use, a text constructed with words from more than one language (written in a hodgepodge; a work of macaronic character).

(3) In structural linguistics, as macaronics, the study of or instances of macaronic language.

(4) Used loosely, anything mixed of stuff from different sources; a gallimaufry; a jumble (now rare).

(5) Of men, a dandy, foppish, trifling, affected (based on like “a macaroni” when used in that sense) (archaic).

1605–1615: From the sixteenth century New Latin macarōnicus, from the dialectal Italian maccarone (coarse dumpling), from the French macaronique (from the association of macaroni (the pasta) as peasant food with the vernacular language of peasants, thus the implication that mixing languages was indicative of “a lack of sophistication; being uneducated”, the construct being macaron(i) + -icus.  The Latin suffix -icus (feminine -ica, neuter -icum) was from i-stem + -cus and occurred in some original cases, becoming influential in adjectival formation and later used freely.  It was cognate with the Ancient Greek -ικός (-ikós), the Proto-Germanic -igaz (source of the Old High German and Old English -ig, the Gothic - -eigs, the Sanskrit -इक (-ika) and Proto-Slavic -ьcь (the latter becoming fossilized as a nominal agent suffix, but it likely originally also served adjectival functions).  The suffix was appended to nouns to form adjectives denoting (1) belong to, (2) derived from or (3) pertaining to and thus may be compared to the suffixes -ic & -ish.  The spelling macaronick has been obsolete since the eighteenth century.  Macaronic is a noun & adjective and macaronically is an adverb; the noun plural is macaronics.  The comparative is “more macaronic” and the superlative “most macaronic” and those presumably can be used either of (1) the number of “foreign” words in a text or (2) the extent of the perceived inelegance thus created.

Teofilo Folengo (1491–1544 (who wrote under the pseudonyms Merlino Coccajoa & Merlinus Cocaius)) is regarded as one of the earliest and certainly most celebrated of the Italian macaronic poets.  He had become a Benedictine monk after being disowned (and more to the point, disinherited) by his father, disappointed at his son being sent down from university for “bad behavior”, a character trait which the Benedictines seemed not wholly to have suppressed because while in the village close to the monastery, he was ensorcelled by the comely waif Girolama Dieda who led him astray.  They eloped but after years of wandering, he returned to the church, performing the necessary rites of repentance, remaining in “the arms of God” until he died.  It was in 1519 he published Maccaronea, a volume of burlesques in a style which proved influential, encouraging a host of imitators to pen a literature of rough and ribald satire in mingled Latin and Italian verse.  Helpfully, Brother Folengo in 1517 coined the Modern Latin macaronicus, based on the dialectal Italian maccarone (the pasta macaroni) and provided a verse referencing the ingredents: “Quoddam pulmentum farina, caseo, botiro compaginatum, grossum, rude, et rusticanum” which may be translated as “A certain dish made of flour, cheese, and butter, thick, crude, and rustic”, the elements deconstructed as farina (flour), caseo (cheese), botiro (butter), compaginatum (put together), grossum (thick), rude (crude; rough) & rusticanum (rustic).

So the macaronic verse was what might now be called a “mash-up” of vernacular words in a Latin context with Latin endings; applied loosely to verse in which two or more languages are jumbled together with little regard to syntax but so constructed as to be intelligible; that was what lent them the humor, they were obviously “wrong” but enough remained of conventional structures that the meaning was clear.  Because the dish maccarone was so associated with the rural poor (thus “peasant food”), the idea of the tangled, tortured language(s) of the verse was a caricature of the “talk of the uneducated, unsophisticated yokel”; in other words, a literary analogue of macaroni.  Although it was Folengo who popularized the technique its name, he wasn’t the first to publish verse in the style, Tifi (dagli) Odasi (the pen-name of Italian poet Michele di Bartolomeo degli Odasi (circa 1450–1492) in 1490 issuing Carmen macaronicum de Patavinis (Macaronic Song from Padua).  After the enthusiastic response to Folengo, the idea spread throughout Europe and much macaronic verse soon existed in French and German literature (the Germans calling them Nudeloerse although the works seem now to be listed as Knittelvers among the “amusing doggerel).

Portrait of Madame de Pompadour (1756), oil on canvas by François Boucher (1703-1770), Bavarian State Collection.

Soldiers liked pseudo Latin and Illegitimi non carborundum (Don't let the bastards grind you down) a classic of “Barracks Latin” while schoolboys & undergraduates were drawn to the macaronic limerick, the more bawdy the better:

King Louis, when passing through Bruges
Met a lady whose cunt was so huge
That he said, as he came
In that fabulous dame,
“Atta girl! Apris moi le deluge.” 

Apris moi le deluge (After me, the flood) was a phrase attributed to Louis XV (1710–1774; le Bien-Aimé (Louis the Beloved), King of France 1715-1774) who is reputed to have uttered the words to the Marquise de Pompadour (styled usually as Madame de Pompadour (Jeanne Antoinette Poisson (1721-1764), the king's official chief mistress 1745-1751)).  It conveys a feeling both narcissistic and nihilistic, the notion that once one is dead it matters little what happens in the world, an intoxicating sentiment expressed by characters in many novels.  Whether the king really spoke these exact words isn’t certain and there are different versions but it’s likely based on something he said and historians don’t doubt the fragment of thought is a glimpse into the royal mind.  In a more romantic telling of the tale, he whispers to his concubine: Après nous, le deluge (After us, the flood).

There was a young lady of Nantes
Très jolie, et très élégante, [Very pretty, and very elegant]
But her cunt was so small
It was no good at all,
Except for la plume de ma tante.

La plume de ma tante (The quill (pen) of my Aunt) is notorious for its use in French language teaching and derided as being as useless in general discourse as “The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain”, neither “often coming up in conversation”.

Macaroni is of course an obviously Italian word, a quality once exploited for jocular effect by Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945), someone not noted for his sense of humor.  In his (partly reliable) memoir, Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945) recalled Benito Mussolini’s (1883-1945; Duce (leader) & prime-minister of Italy 1922-1943) 1937 state visit to Berlin being discussed during one of the Führer’s usually dreary social gatherings, recounting the way the sycophantic Dr Joseph Goebbels (1897-1975; Nazi propaganda minister 1933-1945) responded to Hitler having praised the Italian’s virtues and “Caesarean look.”:

“Goebbels interposed.  He was surely speaking in the name of all present, he said, if he called attention to the enormous difference between the Duce and the Führer.  After all, the Führer was quite another kind of personality. In Italy Mussolini might be something special, a Roman among plain ordinary Italians, as the Führer had sometimes remarked; but here in Berlin he was, after all, just an Italian among Germans. At any rate he, Goebbels, at times had felt that the Duce had come walking out of an operetta.  Hider’s initial response to this seemed to be one of contradictory emotions. His new friend was being denigrated, but at the same time he felt flattered and stimulated. When Goebbels followed this up with two or three skillful remarks, Hitler began imitating a few of Mussolini’s poses that had struck him as outré: the outstretched chin, the right hand braced against the hip, the straddle-legged stance. While the onlookers laughed obediently, he flung out a number of Italian or Italian-sounding words like patria, Victoria, macaroni, bellezza, belcanto, telegrafico, and basta. His performance was very funny.”  Speer was not much noted for a sense of humor either.

The curious adoption in England, late in the eighteenth century, of “a macaroni” to describe “a dandy, a foppish and extravagantly well-dressed young man” was an allusion to London’s fashionable Macaroni Club, popular with elegant young men from the what were then called “the better classes” who after their obligatory “Grand Tour of the Continent” arrived home affecting French and Italian fashions and accents, something which brought them some derision.  Interestingly, among twenty-first century entertainment figures, affected foreign accents are still heard.  Macaroni also provided the English ruling class with (yet) another way of putting down foreigners: there were “macaroni philosophers” (anything from other than Greek, German or English empiricist traditions), “macaroni marquises” (European titles of nobility of dubious provenance) and “macaroni makers” (a Foreign Office term for Italian diplomats (a later alternative being “ice-cream salesmen”).  Fortunately though, macaroni cheese (Mac ’n’ Cheese) which upon its eighteenth century introduction to London was an “exotic dish” survived to become truly classless comfort food, albeit one which dieticians are inclined to preach against, at least if enjoyed too much or too often.  In the English-speaking world, the spelling “macaroni” is almost universal although the original Italian form, maccaroni, was for centuries common and remains listed still by some dictionaries as an alternative.  The Italians now use maccheroni and in other countries this can be seen in menus of those Italian restaurants sprinkling a little linguistic flavor.   

Lindsay Lohan’s official Mac ‘n’ cheese recipe.