Unrequited

Unrequited (pronounced uhn-ri-kwahy-tid)

(1) Of love, not returned or reciprocated.

(2) Not avenged or retaliated.

(3) Not repaid or satisfied.

1535–1545: The construct was un- + the past participle of requit (ie +-ed).  The un- prefix was from the Middle English un-, from the Old English un-, from the Proto-West Germanic un-, from the Proto-Germanic un-, from the primitive Indo-European n̥-.  It was cognate with the Scots un- & on-, the North Frisian ün-, the Saterland Frisian uun-, the West Frisian ûn- &  on-, the Dutch on-, the Low German un- & on-, the German un-, the Danish u-, the Swedish o-, the Norwegian u- and the Icelandic ó-.  It was (distantly) related to the Latin in- and the Ancient Greek ἀ- (a-), source of the English a-, the Modern Greek α- (a-) and the Sanskrit अ- (a-).  The verb requite dates from circa 1400 in the sense of "repay" (for good or ill), the construct being re- (back) + the Middle English quite (clear, pay up), an early variant of the verb quit preserved in this word.  The –ed suffix was from the Middle English –ede & -eden, from the Old English –ode & -odon (weak past ending), from the Proto-Germanic -ōd- & -ōdēdun.  It was cognate with the Saterland Frisian -ede (-ed) (first person singular past indicative ending), the Swedish -ade (-ed) and the Icelandic -aði.  The suffix was used to form past tenses of (regular) verbs. In linguistics, it remains used for the base form of any past form.  Unrequited is an adjective.  In English, from the 1540s, the earliest reference of the Middle English requiten (to repay), from Old French requiter, is to love affairs.

Probably few were as suited to the calling of suffering as Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) so in taking Ted Hughes (1930–1998; Poet Laureate 1984-2008) as a husband, she made a good career move.

When you give someone your whole heart and he doesn't want it, you cannot take it back. It's gone forever.  Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (1963).

Path's only novel, The Bell Jar was first published in the UK under the pen-name "Victoria Lucas" and is usually described as "semi-autobiographical", names of people & places changed to protect the innocent and the guilty, a literary genre known as a Roman à clef (from the French and literally "novel with a key"), the notion of the "key" being that certain knowledge allows a reader to "unlock" the truth, a instance of "reading between the lines" and the technique has widely been used for reasons both personal and legal.  Within a month of publication, Plath would take her own life and it wasn't until 1967 The Bell Jar was re-released under her name.  Dr Heather Clark's (b 1974) recent biography of Plath (Red Comet (2021)) was outstanding.

Emily Brontë (1818–1848) receives insufficient credit for inventing the modern emo and there are more strands of her in them than there are of the brooding German romantics who tend to be more acknowledged.  Were they here today, Cathy and Heathcliff would be in their darkened bedrooms, on their phones, friending and un-friending each other.

You loved me-then what right had you to leave me? What right-answer me-for the poor fancy you felt for Linton?  Because misery and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will, did it. I have not broken your heart - you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine.  Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1847).

Her only novel, Wuthering Heights was first published under the ambiguous pen name "Ellis Bell", a hint at the attitudes of many in the literary establishment (and not a few publishers) towards women writers.  Tellingly, critics at the time were often not kind and while the power of the text was noted, for most it seems to have been too raw to be thought "respectable" fiction and it's latter day reputation as one of the classics of English literature evolved only in the twentieth century under the influence of modernist writing and proto-feminism.  Wuthering Heights is one of those books best read when young because if too long delayed, the historic moment may have passed.  That said, there have probably been some young ladies who read it while at their most impressionable and never quite recovered.

There are many portraits of William Shakespeare (1564–1616) but all are of at least dubious provenance and although there is a contemporary reference to a painting or drawing existing during his lifetime, it's thought all known images were probably created after his death.

If asked to distil from Shakespeare’s works the two most frequent themes, one might suggest "low skulduggery" and "unrequited love" though that’s something which might be said of many literary traditions.  In unrequited love Shakespeare saw comedic potential as well as tragedy because it’s as present in Much Ado About Nothing (1598) & All’s Well that Ends Well (1602) as it is in Romeo & Juliet (1594) where youthful agonies are laid bare.  Sometimes there’s overlap between the tragic and the comic: Malvolio’s desire for the affections Olivia in Twelfth Night (1602) are played for laughs although there’s something cruel about the way things end.  In Cymbeline (1609), it’s a tangle with a flavour of a modern TV talk show, Cloten besotted with Imogen, his mother’s husband’s daughter (ie his step-sister).  Queen Katharine (Catherine of Aragon) in Henry VIII (1613) was the first of the king’s many wives and was both abandoned and bewildered why her love was unrequited but Henry had his own agenda and was in some was perhaps closer to Falstaff in The Merry Wives of Windsor (1597) where it’s really an unrequited lust.  Low skulduggery and unrequited love are both explored in Othello (1603), Roderigo’s longing for Desdemona rendering him vulnerable to manipulation by the evil Iago who harbours his own desires.  In Measure for Measure (1603) there’s a reward for Mariana enduring “five years” of unrequited love for “thou cruel Angelo” who cancelled their engagement because he dowery wasn’t enough: “Her promised proportions / Came short of composition”.  Angelo however is outwitted and Mariana gets her man.  In that case, for her at least, all was well that ends well.  So in Shakespeare there is plenty of unrequited love but he seems to have found the Norse and other Germanic myths emotionally over-wrought and was more pragmatic:

Why then, O brawling love! O loving hate!
O any thing, of nothing first create!
O heavy lightness, serious vanity,
Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms,
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health,
Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!
This love feel I, that feel no love in this.
William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (1594)

The Roman Poet Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso; 43 BC–17 AD) in the 814 line Remedia Amoris ("Love's Remedy", circa 2 AD) offered a cure for pining youth suffering the pangs of unrequited love.  His solutions included travel, teetotalism, gardening and, without any apparent sense of irony, the avoidance of love poets.

Lindsay Lohan, Something That I Never Had from Speak (2004).

Do you see me?

Do you feel me like I feel you?

Call your number

I cannot get through

You don't hear me

And I don't understand

When I reach out

Well, I don't find your hand

 

Were they wasted words?

And did they mean a thing

And all that precious time

But I still feel so in-between

 

Someday, I just keep pretending

That you'll stay

Dreaming of a different ending

I wanna hold on

But it hurts so bad

And I can't keep something that I never had

 

Well, I keep tellin' myself

Things can turn around with time

And if I wait it out

You could always change your mind

Like a fairytale

Where it works out in the end

Can I close my eyes?

Have you lying here again

Lindsay Lohan's Something That I Never Had was a tale of the agony of unrequited love.  She should have read from Part XIII of Ovid's Remedia Amoris:

Remembering reopens love, the wound’s newly re-opened:
trifling errors damage the weak-minded.
Consider how, if you touch ashes that are almost dead
with sulphur, they revive, and a tall flame comes from nothing.
So, if you don’t avoid whatever reawakens love,
the flames will light again that once were quenched.

Solemncholy

Solemncholy (pronounced sol-uhm-kol-ee)

(1) Solemn; serious.

(2) Solemn and melancholic.

1772: The construct was solemn +‎ (melan)choly.  The element –choly was never a standard suffix and was a Middle English variant of –colie used in French.  The Middle English adjective solemn dated from the late thirteenth century and was from solemne & solempne, from either Old French or directly from the Late Latin sōlennis & sōlempnis or the Classical Latin sōlemnis, a variant of sollemnis (consecrated, holy; performed or celebrated according to correct religious forms) which has always been of obscure origin although Roman scholars thought it could have come only from sollus (whole; complete), the derivative adjective formed by appending the noun annus (year), thus the idea of sollemnis meaning “taking place every year”.  Not all modern etymologists are convinced by that but acknowledge “some assimilation via folk-etymology is possible”.  In English, the extension of meaning from “annual events; sacred rites, ceremonies, holy days” to “a grave and serious demeanor; mirthless” was associative describing the behaviour expected of individuals attending such events.  Over time, the later sense became dissociated from the actual events and the original meaning became obsolete, surviving only in a handful of formal ecclesiastical calendars.  The word, without any reference to religious ceremonies meaning “marked by seriousness or earnestness” was common by the late fourteenth century, the sense of “fitted to inspire devout reflection” noted within decades.    Solemncholy is an adjective and no sources list the noun solemncholic or the adverb solemncholically as standard forms although, by implication, the need would seem to exist.  Emos presumably apply the adjectival comparative (more solemncholy) & superlative (most solemncholy) and perhaps too (during emo get-togethers) the plural forms solemncholics & solemncholies.

Melancholy was from the Middle English melancolie & malencolie (mental disorder characterized by sullenness, gloom, irritability, and propensity to causeless and violent anger), from the thirteenth century Old French melancolie (black bile; ill disposition, anger, annoyance), from the Late Latin melancholia, from the Ancient Greek μελαγχολία (melancholia) (atrabiliousness; sadness, (literally “excess of black bile”)), the construct being μέλας (mélas) or μελαν- (melan-) (black, dark, murky) + χολή (kholḗ) (bile).  It appeared in Latin as ātra bīlis (black bile) and was for centuries part of orthodox medical diagnosis and the adjectival use was a genuine invention of Middle English although whether the used of the –ly as a component of the suffix was an influence or a product isn’t known.  Pre-modern medicine attributed what would now be called “depression” to excess “black bile”, a secretion of the spleen and one of the body's four “humors” which needed to be “in balance” to ensure physical & mental well-being.  The adjectival use in Middle English to describe “sorrow, gloom” was most associated by unrequited love or doomed affairs but this is likely more the influence of poets than doctors.  As the medical profession’s belief in the four humors declined during the eighteenth century as understanding of human physiology improved, the word was in the mid-1800s picked up by the newly (almost) respectable branch of psychiatry where it remained a defined “condition” until well into the twentieth century.

The physicians from Antiquity attributed mental depression to unnatural or excess "black bile," a secretion of the spleen and one of the body's four "humors," which help form and nourish the body unless altered or present in excessive amounts. The word also was used in Middle English to mean "sorrow, gloom" (brought on by unrequited love, disappointment etc).  In antiquity it was a concept rather than something with a standardized systemization and there existed competing models with more or fewer components but it’s because the description with four was that endorsed by the Greek physician Hippocrates (circa 460–circa 370 BC) that it became famous in the West and absorbed into medical practice.  The four humors of Hippocratic medicine were (1) black bile (μέλαινα χολή (melaina chole)), (2) yellow bile (ξανθη χολή (xanthe chole)), (3) phlegm (φλέγμα (phlegma)) & (4) blood (αἷμα (haima)), each corresponding with the four temperaments of man and linked also to the four seasons: yellow Bile=summer, black bile=autumn, phlegm=winter & blood=spring.  Since antiquity, doctors and scholars wrote both theoretical and clinical works, the words melancholia and melancholy used interchangeably until the nineteenth century when the former came to refer to a pathological condition, the latter to a temperament.  Depression was derived from the Latin verb deprimere (to press down) and from the fourteenth century, "to depress" meant to subjugate or to bring down in spirits and by 1665 was applied to someone having "a great depression of spirit", Dr Johnson (Samuel Johnson, 1709-1784) using the word in a similar sense in 1753.  Later, the term came into use in physiology and economics.

What was for over two-thousand years known as melancholia came gradually to be called depression, a reclassification formalized in the mid-twentieth century when mental illness was subject to codification.  The first edition of the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM (1952)) included depressive reaction and the DSM-II (1968) added depressive neurosis, defined as an excessive reaction to internal conflict or an identifiable event, and also included a depressive type of manic-depressive psychosis within the category of Major Affective Disorders.  The term Major Depressive Disorder was introduced by a group of US clinicians in the mid-1970s and was incorporated into the DSM-III (1980).  Interestingly, the ancient idea of melancholia survives in modern medical literature in the notion of the melancholic subtype but, from the 1950s, the newly codified definitions of depression were widely accepted (although not without some dissent) and the nomenclature, with enhancements, continued in the DSM-IV (1994) and DSM-5 (2013)

According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the earliest known instance of solemncholy in text dates from 1772 in the writings of Philip Vickers Fithian (1747–1776), peripatetic tutor, missionary & lay-preacher of the Presbyterian denomination of Christianity, now best remembered for his extensive diaries and letters which continue to provide historians with source material relating to the pre-revolutionary north-eastern colonies which would later form the United States of America.  His observations on slavery and the appalling treatment of those of African origin working the plantations in Virginia remain a revealing counterpoint to the rationalizations and justifications (not infrequently on a theological or scriptural basis) offered by many other contemporary Christians.  Those dictionaries which include an entry for solemncholy often note it as one of the humorous constructions in English, based usually on words from other languages or an adaptation of a standard English form.  That’s certainly how it has come to be used but Fithian was a Presbyterian who aspired to the ministry, not a breed noted for jocularity and in his journal entries its clear he intended to word to mean only that he was pursuing serious matters, in 1773 writing: “Being very solemncholy and somewhat tired, I concluded to stay there all night.”

So it was an imaginative rather than a fanciful coining.  In contemporary culture, with mental health conditions increasingly fashionable, solemncholy (although still sometimes, if rarely, used in its original sense) found a new niche among those who wished to intellectualize their troubled state of mind and distinguish their affliction from mere depression which had become a bit common.  In a roundabout way, this meant it found a role too in humor, a joke about someone’s solemncholy still acceptable whereas to poke fun at their depression would be at least a micro-aggression:

Q: Victoria says she suffers from solemncholy.  Do you think that's a real condition?

A: Victoria is an emo; for her solemncholy is a calling.

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

The companion term to solemncholy is the sometimes acronym leucocholy (a state of feeling that accompanies preoccupation with trivial and insipid diversions).  The construct of leucocholy was leuco- + (melan)choly.  The leuco- prefix (which had appeared also as leuko-, leuc- & leuk-) was from the Proto-Hellenic λευκός (leukós) (white; colourless; leucocyte), from the primitive Indo-European lewk- (white; light; bright), the cognates including the Latin lūx, the Sanskrit रोचते (rocate), the Old Armenian լոյս (loys) and the Old English lēoht (light, noun) from which English gained “light”.  In the Ancient Greek, the word evolved to enjoy a range or meanings, just as in would happen English including (1) bright, shining, gleaming, (2) light in color; white, (3) pale-skinned, weakly, cowardly & (4) fair, happy, joyful.  Leucocholy is said to have been coined by the English poet and classical scholar Thomas Gray (1716–1771) whose oeuvre was highly regarded despite being wholly compiled into one slim volume and he’s remembered also for declining appointment as England’s Poet Laureate, thereby forgoing the both the tick of approval from the establishment and the annual cask of “strong wine” which came with the job.  What he meant by a “white melancholy” seems to have been a state of existence in which there may not be joy or enchantment but is pleasant: unfulfilling yet undemanding.  In such a state of mind, as he put it:  ca ne laisse que de s’amuser (which translates most elegantly as something like “all that is left for us is to have some fun”).

Purgatory

Purgatory (pronounced pur-guh-tree (U), pur-guh-tawr-ee (non-U) or pur-guh-tohr-ee (non-U)

(1) In the orthodox theology of the Roman Catholic Church (and in some other Christian denominations), a condition or place in which the souls of those dying penitent (in a state of grace) are purified from venial sins, or undergo the temporal punishment that, after the guilt of mortal sin has been remitted, still remains to be endured by the sinner.

(2) In the Italian Purgatorio (pronounced poor-gah-taw-ryaw), the second part of Dante's (Dante Alighieri (circa 1265–1321)) Divine Comedy (1320), in which repentant sinners are depicted.

(3) Any condition or place of temporary punishment, suffering, expiation, or the like; any place of suffering, usually for past misdeeds.

(4) Serving to cleanse, purify, or expiate

1160-1180: From the Middle English purgatorie (place or condition of temporal punishment for spiritual cleansing after death of souls dying penitent and destined ultimately for Heaven), from the Old French purgatore & purgatorie, from the Medieval Latin pūrgātōrium (means of cleaning), noun use of neuter of the Late Latin pūrgātōrius (purging, literally “place of clensing”), the construct being pūrgā(re) (to purge) + -tōrius (-tory), the adjectival suffix, from purgat-, past-participle stem of pūrgāre (to purge, cleanse, purify).  The adjectival form developed in the late thirteenth century, independent of the evolution in Church Latin.  The figurative use (state of mental or emotional suffering, expiation etc) dates from the late fourteenth century, originally used poetically especially despairingly when speaking of unrequited love, or (and this may seem a paradox to same and merely descriptive to others), of marriage.   In old New England it was used of narrow gorges and steep-sided ravines, a reference to the difficulties to be dad when negotiating such terrain.  The related forms were purgatorial & purgatorian; the noun, plural was purgatories.

Mankind's Eternal Dilemma: The Choice Between Virtue and Vice (1633) by Frans Francken the Younger (1581–1642), Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), Boston.

In the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, the purgatory is the condition of souls of the dead who die with punishment but not damnation due them for their sins committed on Earth.  Purgatory is conceived as a condition of suffering and purification that leads to union with God in heaven and is something thus inherently temporary and has always been a bit of a theological problem because it’s not mentioned (or even alluded to) in the Bible.  The usual rationalization of this scriptural lacuna is the argument that prayer for the dead is an ancient practice of Christianity and one which has always assumed the dead can be in a state of suffering, something which the living can improve by their prayers.  Theological positions have hung on thinner strands than that and within Roman Catholicism, purgatory has never attracted the controversy which so excited critics of limbo, a rather more obviously unjust medieval conjecture, but many branches of Western Christianity, notably the Protestant tradition, deny its existence although among the more ritualistic, there are those who conceive purgatory as a place and one often depicted as filled with fire.  The transitory nature of the condition has often encouraged misunderstanding for it is not a place of probation; the ultimate salvation of those in purgatory assured, the impenitent not received into purgatory.  Instead, the souls in purgatory receive relief through the prayers of the faithful and through the sacrifice of the mass, the confusion perhaps arising from the imagining the destructive nature of fire on Earth whereas upon the soul with no earthly attachment, it can be only cleansing.

So purgatory is the state of those who die in God's grace but are not yet perfectly purified; they are guaranteed eternal salvation but must undergo purification after death to gain the holiness needed to enter heaven.  The purgatory, the framework of which was fully developed at the Councils of Florence (1431-1449) and Trent (1545 and 1563), is totally different from the punishment of the damned who are subject to a cleansing fire, the scriptural explanation being "The person will be saved, but only through fire" (1 Corinthians 3:15) but even then the Church recognized degrees of sin as Pope Gregory I (Saint Gregory the Great, circa 540–604; pope 590-604) helpfully clarified: "As for certain lesser faults, there is a purifying fire."  The possibilities were made explicit during the Council of Trent in the statement “God predestines no one to hell” which made clear that damnation is visited upon sinners only by a persistence in mortal sin until death and God would much prefer "all to come to repentance" (2 Peter 3:9).   In the Roman ritual, the relevant line is "save us from final damnation and count us among those you have chosen" and through purgatory, souls "achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven".  Mortal sin incurs both temporal punishment and eternal punishment, venial sin ("forgivable sin” in this context) incurs only temporal punishment. The Catholic Church makes a distinction between the two.

The noun purgatory appeared perhaps between 1160 and 1180, giving rise to the idea of purgatory as a place but the Roman Catholic tradition of purgatory as a transitional condition has a history that pre-dates even the birth of Christ.  There was, around the world, a widespread practice of both caring for and praying for the dead, the idea that prayer contributed to their purification in the afterlife.  Anthropologists note the ritual practices in other traditions, such as the way medieval Chinese Buddhists would make offerings on behalf of the dead, said to suffer numerous trials so there is nothing novel in the practice which is mentioned in what the Roman Catholic Church has declared to be part of Sacred Scripture, and which was adopted by Christians from the beginning, a practice that pre-supposes that the dead are thereby assisted between death and their entry into their final and eternal abode.

Whether purgatory is actually a place has in Roman circles been discussed for centuries.  In 2011 Pope Benedict XVI (b 1927; pope 2005-2013, pope emeritus since), speaking of Saint Catherine of Genoa (1447–1510), said that in her time the purgatory was pictured as a location in space, but that she saw it as a purifying inner fire, such as she experienced in her profound sorrow for sins committed, such a contrast with God's infinite love.  The failing of man she said was being bound to the desires and suffering that derive from sin and that makes it impossible for the soul to enjoy the beatific vision of God.  Noting that little appeared to have changed, Benedict noted "We too feel how distant we are, how full we are of so many things that we cannot see God. The soul is aware of the immense love and perfect justice of God and consequently suffers for having failed to respond in a correct and perfect way to this love; and love for God itself becomes a flame, love itself cleanses it from the residue of sin."

The Eastern Catholic Churches are Catholic churches sui iuris of Eastern tradition, (in full communion with the Pope) but there are some differences with Rome on aspects of purgatory, mostly relating to terminology and speculation.  The Eastern Catholic Churches of Greek tradition do not generally use the word "purgatory", but agree that there is a "final purification" for souls destined for heaven and that prayers can help the dead who are in that state of "final purification".  In neither east nor west are these matters thought substantive and are regarded as nuances and differences of tradition.  The Eastern Catholic Churches belonging to the Syriac Tradition (Chaldean, Maronite and Syriac Catholic), generally believe in the concept of Purgatory but use a different name (usually Sheol) and claim there is contradiction with the Latin-Catholic doctrine.  Rome appears never to have pursued the matter.

The Eastern Orthodox Church rejects the term "purgatory" but does admit an intermediate state after death, the determination of Heaven and Hell being stated in the Bible and it notes prayer for the dead is necessary.  The position of Constantinople and environs is that the moral progress of the soul, for better or worse, ends at the very moment of the separation of body and soul; it is in that instant the definite destiny of the soul in the everlasting life is decided.  There is no way of repentance, no way of escape, no reincarnation and no help from the outside world, the eternal place of the soul decided forever by its Creator and judge.  Thus the Orthodox position is that while all undergo judgment upon death, neither the just nor the wicked attain the final state of bliss or punishment before the last day, the obvious exception being the righteous soul of the Theotokos (the Blessed Virgin Mary), "who was borne by the angels directly to heaven".

Generally, Protestant churches reject the doctrine of purgatory although more than one Archbishop of Canterbury may have come to regard Lambeth Palace as Purgatory on Earth.  One of Protestantism's most cited tenets is sola scriptura (scripture alone) and because the Bible (from which Protestants exclude deuterocanonical books such as 2 Maccabees) contains no obvious mention of purgatory, it’s therefore rejected as an unbiblical and thus un-Christian.  There are however variations such as the doctrine of sola fide (by faith alone) which hold that pure faith, apart from any action, is what achieves salvation, and that good deeds are but mere manifestations of that faith so salvation is a discrete event that takes place once for all during one's lifetime, not the result of a transformation of character.  What does seem to complicate that is that most Protestant teaching is that a transformation of character naturally follows the salvation experience; instead of distinguishing between mortal and venial sins, Protestants believe that one's faith dictates one's state of salvation and one's place in the afterlife, those saved by God destined for heaven, those not excluded.  Purgatory is thus impossible.

Wishing to excise any hint of popery from religion, purgatory was addressed in two of the foundation documents of Anglicanism in the sixteenth century.  Prayers for the departed were deleted in the 1552 revision to the 1549 Book of Common Prayer because they implied a doctrine of purgatory (it was the nineteenth century Anglo-Catholic that saw them restored to some editions) and Article XXII of the the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion (1571) was most explicit: "The Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory . . . is a fond thing, vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the Word of God."  In the twenty-first century, the Anglicans, finding it hard to sit anywhere but on the fence, now say “Purgatory is seldom mentioned in Anglican descriptions or speculations concerning life after death, although many Anglicans believe in a continuing process of growth and development after death.”  The post-modern church writ small; one wonders if the PowerPoint slides of Anglican accountants and Anglican theologians greatly differ.

In Judaism, Gehenna is a place of purification where, according to some traditions, sinners spend up to a year before release.  For some, there are three classes of souls: (1) the righteous who shall at once be written down for the life everlasting, (2) the wicked who shall be damned and (3), those whose virtues and sins counterbalance one another shall go down to Gehenna and float up and down until they rise purified.  Other sects speak only of the good and the bad yet, confusingly, most also mention an intermediate state.  There’s also variance between the traditions regarding the time which purgatory in Gehenna lasts, some saying twelve months and others forty-nine days, both opinions based upon Isaiah 66:23–24: "From one new moon to another and from one Sabbath to another shall all flesh come to worship before Me, and they shall go forth and look upon the carcasses of the men that have transgressed against Me; for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched"; the former interpreting the words "from one new moon to another" to signify all the months of a year; the latter interpreting the words "from one Sabbath to another", in accordance with Leviticus 23:15-16, to signify seven weeks.  Whatever the specified duration, there are exceptions made for the souls of the impure which prove resistant to the persuasions of the Gehenna.  According to the Baraita (a Jewish oral law tradition), the souls of the wicked are judged, and after these twelve months are are consumed and transformed into ashes under the feet of the righteous whereas the "great seducers and blasphemers" are to undergo eternal tortures in Gehenna without cessation.  The righteous however and, according to some, also the sinners among the people of Israel for whom Abraham intercedes because they bear the Abrahamic sign of the covenant, are not harmed by the fire of Gehenna even when they are required to pass through the intermediate state of purgatory.

Ichthyology

Ichthyology (pronounced ik-thee-ol-uh-jee)

(1) In zoology, the scientific study of fishes.

(2) The study of the history, cultural & economic importance of fishes.

1640–1650: A compound word, the construction being ichthyo- + -logy.  Ichthyo- and ichthy- were from the Ancient Greek ἰχθύς (ikhthús) (fish), possibly from the primitive Indo-European dhghu and there may be a relationship with the Old Armenian ձուկն (jukn) & the Lithuanian žuvis and the suffix –logy was derived from the Ancient Greek λογία (logos) (to study).  The English -logy suffix originates with loanwords from the Greek, usually via Latin and French, where the -λογία is an integral part of the word loaned whereas the French -logie is a continuation of the Latin -logia, ultimately from Ancient Greek -λογία (-logía).  Within English, the suffix has long been productive, especially to form names of sciences or departments of study, analogous to names of disciplines loaned from the Latin, such as astrology from astrologia or geology from geologia. Original compositions of terms with no precedent in Greek or Latin become common by the early nineteenth century, sometimes imitating French or German templates; insectology (1766) after the French insectologie & terminology (1801) after the German terminologie.  By the twentieth century, English creations with no Greek or Latin origin (undergroundology (1820), hatology (1837) were frequent, sometimes in conjunction with –ism words.  Ichthyology is a noun, related forms include ichthyologic & ichthyological (adjectives), ichthyologically is an adverb; the noun plural is ichthyologists.

The noun piscatology was an irregular (and jocular) formation dating from 1857, the construct being the Latin piscatus, past participle of piscārī (to fish), present active infinitive of piscor, from piscis, from the Proto-Italic piskis, from the primitive Indo-European peysḱ-, the cognates including the Old Irish íasc, the Gothic fisks and the Old English fisċ + -olgy.  The word piscatology has been used to mean “the study of fish” (and thus a synonym of ichthyology)) but not by scientists and the irregular form is now more correctly casually applied to fishing and those who fish.  In the 1990s, the idea behind the construction of piscatology begat piscetarian and pescetarian (a person who consumes no animal flesh with the exception of fish or other seafood), by analogy with “vegetarian”.

Reeling one in: Lindsay Lohan and Hofit Golan (b 1985) fishing off Sardinia, July 2016.  They would be considered piscatologists rather than ichthyologists although there are humorless purists who insist there's no such word as piscatologist.

In zoology, the modern conventions of taxonomy mean fishes are precisely categorized but the English word “fish” for centuries was used to describe a much wider range of species (although one discerning observer in the fifteenth century did concoct fishes bestiales (water animals other than fishes), presumably on the basis fishes proper should be limited to something like “a vertebrate which has gills and fins adapting it for living in the water”.  As still familiar names like starfish, jellyfish, shellfish & cuttlefish attest, just about any fully aquatic animal (including mammals like dolphins & whales) was thought some sort of fish and attempts by zoologists to rectify things (such as suggesting the starfish should retroactively be named sea star) have made little impact.  The difficulty with such a project is that historically, some fish were also misleadingly named.  The name seahorse (also as sea horse & sea-horse) encompasses dozens of small fish in the genus Hippocampus, from the Ancient Greek hippókampos (ἱππόκαμπος), the construct being híppos (ἵππος) (horse) + kámpos (κάμπος) (sea monster or sea animal).  To be consistent, these engaging creatures would presumably have to be named horsefish (risking confusion with one of Donald Trump’s alleged former associates) or something else less appealing than seahorse and that’s unlikely to attract much support.

Fish was from the Middle English fisch, from Old English fisċ (fish), from the Proto-West Germanic fisk, from the Proto-Germanic fiskaz (fish) and was related to the West Frisian fisk, the Dutch vis, the German Fisch, the Danish, Norwegian & Swedish fisk and the Icelandic fiskur.  The word was linked with both the Latin piscis and the Old Irish īasc although the actual root remains unknown.  Some have constructed the primitive Indo-European roots pisk & peysk- because of evidence gleaned from the Italic, Celtic, and Germanic but it remains speculative and one etymologist maintains that (on phonetic grounds), it may be a north-western Europe substratum word .  The verb fish (to harvest creatures living in water) was from the Old English fiscian ("to try to catch fish) was cognate with the Old Norse fiska, the Old High German fiscon, the German fischen and the Gothic fiskon and was directly from the noun; the related forms were fished & fishing.

Lindsay Lohan with catch.  To avoid cancellation, she posted on Instagram that “Bonding with nature. I let my little friend swim away after.”

In astronomy and (the then respectable) astrology, the constellation Pisces was so described from the late-fourteenth century.  From the mid eighteenth century, “fish” (with modifiers) came to be applied to people in a usually derogatory sense, a shift from the earlier use when it had been positive in the sense of someone being a good (romantic) “catch”.  The original figurative sense was of a “fish out of water” (person in an unfamiliar and awkward situation (usually social)) recorded in the 1610s and in the same vein the phrase “a fisshe out of the see” was noted in the mid-fifteenth century.  To “drink like a fish” was from 1744 and was applied to those over-fond of strong drink while “having other fish to fry” (other things demanding more immediate attention) dates from the 1650s.  In optics, the fish-eye lens was first sold in 1961, fish-and-chips became a staple of English cuisine in the 1870s and fish-fingers were first sold (in frozen form) from 1962, the earlier fish-cake known since the 1910s and especially popular during wartime rationing.

The phrase “plenty more fish in the sea” was a re-assuring line for those whose love was unrequited and like “cold fish” & “queer fish” (both alluding to qualities detected in those with some degree of social ineptitude) was a coining from the early twentieth century.  Usually applied to other soldiers, “queer fish” was a favourite of Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke (1883–1963; Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS) 1941-1946), a perhaps unexpected choice for one of Britain’s more renowned ornithologists.  Why Sir Henry Channon (1897–1958) gained the nickname "Chips" is uncertain but it’s popularly attributed to a photograph taken of him standing on the stairs while at Oxford, next to a Mr Fysch.  Channon’s (almost) un-redacted diaries (1918-1957 (with gaps)), published in three volumes between 2021-2023 revealed him at his best and worst and are an indispensable companion while reading anything about mid-twentieth century British politics.

The plural of fish is an illustration of the inconsistency of English.  As the plural form, “fish” & “fishes” are often (and harmlessly) used interchangeably but in zoology, there is a distinction, fish (1) the noun singular & (2) the plural when referring to multiple individuals from a single species while fishes is the noun plural used to describe different species or species groups.  The differentiation is thus similar to that between people and peoples yet different from the use adopted when speaking of sheep and, although opinion is divided on which is misleading (the depictions vary), the zodiac sign Pisces is referred to variously as both fish & fishes.

Manikin & Mannequin

Manikin (pronounced man-i-kin)

(1) A man short in stature; (sometimes as a term of endearment but now archaic).

(2) In folklore, a dwarf; pygmy.

(3) An anatomically correct model of the human body (or a part of the body), used for teaching or demonstrating surgical and other clinical techniques; a specialized form is the phantom, an anatomical model of a fully developed fetus, for use in teaching midwifery or obstetrics.

(4) A three-dimensional figure, dummy or effigy representing a man or person (now replaced by mannequin), manikin now correctly used only in the medical context.

1560s: From the Dutch manneken (literally “little man”), a diminutive of the Middle Dutch mannekijn, from the Proto-Germanic manwaz, from the primitive Indo-European root man- (man).  The original meaning was "a jointed model of the human figure used by artists" and the sense and spelling is often blended with mannequin.  The early synonyms (in the context of small humans) included homunculus, midget, peewee, shorty, titman, & doll and (in the sense of the artificial creations) dummy, figure, mannequin & marionette.  The noun plural is manikins; the (rare) alternative spelling is mannikin.

Mannequin (pronounced man-i-kin)

(1) A styled and three-dimensional representation of the human form used in window displays, as of clothing; dummy.

(2) A figure or model of the human figure used by tailors, dress designers etc, for fitting or making clothes; historically made from timber but now constructed from many combinations of materials.

(3) A person employed to wear clothing to be photographed or to be displayed before customers, buyers etc; a clothes model (dated).

(4) In the visual arts, arts another name for a lay figure

1902: From the fifteenth century French mannequin (model to display clothes) from the Dutch manneken (model of the human figure used by artists).  Mannequin was the French form of the same word that yielded manikin and in English, was sometimes used in the sense "artificial man" (especially in translations, the trend apparently triggered by the frequency of use in early twentieth century translations of the works of Victor Hugo (1802–1885)).  Originally, it was applied to humans in the modern sense of “a model” and not until 1931 did it assume the meaning of “artificial human model figure to display clothing”.  A sideway variation was the later “clotheshorse” (a person whose chief interest and pleasure is dressing fashionably).  The noun plural is mannequins.

The difference between a Manikin and a Mannequin

Mannequin was a word once used where model would now be preferred, a person employed to wear clothes and carry accessories but since the 1930s a mannequin is a usually plastic or fibreglass emulation of the human form (in shape but not fine detail), typically found scattered throughout clothing and department stores, most famously as part of displays in shop-front windows.  Most mannequins represent a body shape within a fairly narrow range of dimensions but the industry recognizes eighteen different types including the obvious like “sexy” and “sporty” but there are also the niches such as pregnant people.

Manikins are also human shaped models but rather than being a fashion platform, they are used to help simulate medical, surgical, or clinical scenarios to assist in training and the honing of technique.  There are a variety of manikins and in the jargon of the medical devices industry, they range from low to high fidelity, the rating an indication of the degree of anatomical realism included, a high-fidelity manikin sometimes even including movement, speech, muscular reaction and facial expressions.  A high-fidelity manikin might include a complete set of internal organs and have many interchangeable parts whereas a low-fidelity model might be just a hollow shell used to teach students how to insert an IV or perfect the techniques of bandaging.

Manikins exist so those working in a clinical environment, from students to surgeons, can enjoy a safe environment in which to practice their skills, without the obvious risk of using live patients.  Although doctors continue, as they have for centuries, to murder their patients, rarely suffering any consequences due to the cozy legal apparatus known as “medical misadventure”, the use of manikins presumably lessens the slaughter of the innocent.  Like mannequins, manikins are designed for purpose and there are birthing simulators, newborn simulators, simulators that go into cardiac arrest, and even dental simulators.

L'Inconnue’s death mask.

Although anatomical models were used in medical training as early as the sixteenth century, the first manikin (in the modern understanding) was released in 1960 as a device for teaching cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).  The design parameters were written by two physicians, Austrian Peter Safar (1924-2003) and American James Elam (1918–1995), the engineering and fabrication handled by Norwegan Åsmund Lærdal (1914-1981), head of a company with expertise in plastic molding from their experience as a manufacturer of children’s toys.  Famously, the face on the manikin is that of L'Inconnue (L'Inconnue de la Seine (The unknown woman of the Seine)).

Crowd at the public viewing portal of the Paris Morgue, circa 1890.

L'Inconnue, was probably about sixteen when she died in the late 1880s and although it’s not certain, most then concluded she took her own life.  As was done at the time, after her lifeless form was pulled from the River Seine at the Quai du Louvre, the corpse was put on public display at the Paris mortuary, a popular attraction and one justified by the purpose of hoping some of the dead might be identified.  Despite the daily crowd, none came forward to name L'Inconnue.  The dead waif however was far from unnoticed, many remarking on her unusually serene appearance and one much taken by her was the pathologist who performed the autopsy.  He had a plaster-cast taken of her face (a not uncommon practice) and within years, reproductions of L'Inconnue's alluring, deathly likeness were being sold throughout Europe, the mesmerizing mask, later describe by philosopher Albert Camus (1913-1960) as a "drowned Mona Lisa", fixed to the walls of drawing rooms, fashionable salons and the studios of (presumably already troubled) artists.  The silent beauty also attracted writers and early in the twentieth century there was a rash of imaginative fiction speculating about the short life of L'Inconnue, many melodramatic, most constructing a short, tragic life battered by ill fortune and finally taken by the waters of the Seine.  For writers, it was the lure of the tragic, death, water and a waif irresistibly romantic and in death she became the one of the great influencers of her age, described as “the aesthetic template for a whole generation of German girls who modeled their looks on her", adored in death as many authors liked to imagine she never was when alive.

L'Inconnue’s death mask would over the years attract artists and it’s been rendered in many materials including ceramics, copper, bronze, granite and even chocolate, seen as an icon and on canvas with a variety paints.

Decades later, L'Inconnue’s image would again be revived.  Åsmund Lærdal in the 1940s had been a manufacturer of small wooden toys but in the post-war years, attracted by the possibilities of the then novel plastic, he experimented with the soft, malleable substance and, finding it ideal for his purposes, embarked on mass-production, one of his products the acclaimed toy “Anne”, a baby with “sleeping eyes and natural hair".  Anne enjoyed international success and when told the two anesthesiologists, impressed by the life-like behavior of the doll’s plastic material, had asked if he could fabricate and mass-produce a life-sized adult manikin on which could be demonstrated their newly developed resuscitation technique, they found an attentive listener; some years earlier, Lærdal's two year old son had nearly drowned and had his father not forced the water from his airways, he too may well have died.  For a toymaker with expertise in the molding of plastic to form hollow toys, it was a formidable engineering challenge not only to create a realistic, functional maikin that reliably could be used to demonstrate the physical complexities of CPR but to design a mass-produced product which would be financially viable.

Resusci Anne in carry-case.

The technical specifications provided by the doctors had included a collapsible chest for practicing compressions and open lips to simulate mouth-to-mouth resuscitation but Lærdal, after discussions with his engineers, concluded it was also important the manikin should be recognizably female, suspecting men might be reluctant to practice CPR on a male doll's lips.  It was during the design process Lærdal recalled the enigmatic half-smile on a mask he'd seen on a wall while visiting relatives and it was this memory which inspired him to choose L'Inconnue.  Resusci Anne (Rescue Anne or CPR Anne in the US) was released in 1960 and was the first device of its type, so successful the Lærdal Toy Company soon transformed to become Lærdal Medical and it’s estimated over 300 million people around the world have been trained in CPR, most of them using Resusci Anne.  If L'Inconnue really did, as so many authors would have, take her own life in the depths of a despair only unrequited love can induce, fate would have her in death inspire Resusci Anne, called “the most kissed girl in the world”.

Perhaps surprisingly, Andy Warhol never took L'Inconnue as his subject.  This one is a fake.

Despite the sad charm of that, it couldn’t happen now, the ethics of making reproductions of a dead person's face and selling them without consent, un-discussed in the late nineteenth century, troubling today.  Were such a product now to be created and a life-like face was necessary, the visage would have to be either licensed or anonymized.  However, psychologists have conducted trials using a genuine Resusci Anne and one with no discernible facial characteristics and reported the more anthropomorphic appeared to enhance the realism of resuscitation training.  The researchers noted the face made CPR training more intense and stressful for both clinicians and lay-people but their follow-up questionnaires some months later revealed those who “kissed L'Inconnue” displayed a much higher recall of the techniques learned on the day.  She may have died forgotten, but in her immortal after-life, L'Inconnue is clearly memorable.

The romance of L'Inconnue is compelling but there have long been doubts about the original masks, sceptics suggesting it’s unlikely the flawless features could have come from a corpse fished from a river, the suspicion being a pretty young model might have been the source for the cast taken to take commercial advantage of the great public interest in the story of the young girl.  There are other theories too and the truth will never be known but L'Inconnue’s mystery is the essence of the strange tale.

Some assembly required: The Apprentice Doctor’s Full-Body Adult, Nursing and Trauma Manikin.

Supplied as a kit complete with burns, lacerations, and broken bones, it’s said to offer a realistic experience in the identification, assessment, treatment, and transport of trauma patients and disaster victims and can be used in forensic medicine and CSI training, working well as a manikin for crime scene simulation projects.  Prices start at US$1,199.00.

To ensure durability and ease of maintenance, the manikin contains no latex and the manufacturer cautions the kit (1) is intended exclusively for classroom instructional (educational) use and training purposes, (2) requires adult supervision and guidance for students under the age of 17 years and is not suitable for those under the age of 15 and (3) contains items that may pose a choking hazard to toddlers and babies (keep out of reach of these age groups).

Intended as a low-maintenance product, the post training cleaning routine consists of (1) after nasal feeding, gastric lavage, enema, male and female urethral catheterization procedures, empty all the residual liquid, used from the stomach, intestines and bladder, (2) Rinse all used tubes & catheters with water and dry for re-use and (3) if in disuse for an extended period of time, the manikin should be wiped clean, covered and placed in a cool, dry place; this will extend service life.

Art deco (though with some debt to mannerism) lady Mannequin bust in plaster for hat or jewelry display.  Just as there are flesh & blood models who specialize is one body part (hand models, foot models etc), there are also mannequins produced for the purpose of featuring just one or several body parts.

Fashion mannequins have been in use since the fifteenth century and were originally the head-forms with which milliners ensured a hat maintained the correct shape during construction.  Once a purely “back-of-house” or “workshop” device, as the price of glass was reduced by the adoption of techniques perfected by the late sixteenth century, glass-windows in shop-fronts became larger and more common so milliners essentially invented the “window display” in its modern form.  Although it had been the practice of many artisans and merchants to display their goods in this manner, it was the milliners who were first in fashion.  By the mid eighteenth century, full-scale, wickerwork mannequins were being used to display dresses, the more conveniently adjustable versions made with wire first manufactured in Paris in 1835.  However, the expansion of the trade created a demand for cheaper, lighter, non-adjustable forms which were purely a platform for display and the first (papier-mâché) female mannequins were sold in France in the mid-nineteenth century, the higher-end stores soon adopting mannequins made from wax which produced a more lifelike appearance but, expensive and apt to be fragile, the wax was in the 1920s supplanted by a more durable composite material, based on plaster.

Statuesque: Two mannequins in the window display of Chanel Shop, Prince's Building, Central Chater Road, Hong Kong.

Modern mannequins are almost always made from plastic or fiberglass although the, as marketing devices, the haute couture houses have used (sometimes stylized) one-off mannequins made from metal and even what was claimed to be carbon-fibre though experts quickly pronounced it fake (as opposed to faux).  Fiberglass mannequins are usually more expensive than plastic and tend to be more fragile but can be rendered in a more life-like form which can be done with plastics but not at a reasonable cost.  In fact, the trend in recent years has been for plastic mannequins to eschew any attempt to appear realistic, presumably to ensure the focus fixes on the clothes.  Artists have also used articulated mannequins (historically known as lay figures), as a tool to assist the rendition of draped figures, the advantage being that unlike a live model (on an hourly rate), a mannequin can be kept indefinitely immobile or adjusted as required.  Additionally, they don’t complain about the cold, demand lunch or take cigarette breaks.

Vintage Playtex Cross Your Heart wire-free bra in beige, displayed on fibreglass mannequin.  For specific purposes, mannequins are sometimes produced with certain aspects scaled beyond the usual size range.

While there are variations which tend to be product-deterministic (and the upper ranges of the alphabet in the bra business is an obvious niche), the size and shape of most mannequins exists in a predictably narrow range and one acknowledged to be smaller in most dimensions (except height) than either the majority of the adult female population or that aligned to the majority of the garments actually sold.  In this of course it follows the profile of the industry’s live models who are famously taller, lighter and thinner than all but a handful of their customers although, under pressure from activists, this pattern is now (slightly) less extreme than once it was, despite many wishing those days would return.  Before we called models models we called them mannequins and, flesh, plastic or fibreglass, little has changed as an extract from The Bystander’s (a British weekly magazine which in 1940 merged with Tatler to be published as The Tatler & Bystander until 1968) edition of 15 August 1906 suggests:

”A mannequin is a good-looking, admirably formed young lady, whose mission is to dress herself in her employer's latest "creations" and to impart to them the grace which only perfect forms can give.  Her grammar may be bad, and her temper worse, but she must have the chic the Parisienne possesses, no matter whether she hails from the aristocratic Faubourg St. Germain or from the Faubourg Montmartre.”

Lindsay Lohan with several mannequins, New York Fashion Week, 2009.