Vapid

Vapid (pronounced vap-id)

(1) Lacking or having lost life, sharpness, or flavor; insipid; flat.

(2) Without liveliness or spirit; dull or tedious; flavorless, spiritless, unanimated, tiresome, prosaic.

1650s:  From the Latin vapidus (literally “that has exhaled its vapor”) and related to vappa (stale wine).  The word was used in Latin to describe anything the taste of which was thought bland, flat or insipid.  Related forms include the adverb vapidly and the noun vapidness but the most common form is the noun vapidity which dates from 1721.  The application to talk and text and music thought dull and lifeless dates from 1758.  The Latin vappa (wine without flavor) is still used figuratively in many languages (sometimes as "bit of a vapp") to refer to a man who is "a good-for-nothing" or a bit foppish.

The Koryo Burger

The Koryo Burger package.

It’s estimated that prior to Covid-19, some five-thousand Western tourists annually would visit the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK; North Korea), a trade it was hoped might quickly recover given it wasn't until early 2022 that the first COVID-19 outbreak of the pandemic was confirmed.  Remaining virus-free for so long was said to be an example of The Supreme Leader’s outstanding administration of the public health system, the outbreak the fault of lazy officials would have been dealt with in the DPRK way.  It’s not yet clear when the boarders will be re-opened, Pyongyang having no desire to expose its happy and grateful population to foreign diseases but one thing prospective tourists hungrily can anticipate is the national airline’s in-flight meal.  Although Air Koryo serves only the famously vapid Koryo Burger, it’s legendarily consistent, always cold and presented on a paper doily.  Inside the bun is a piece of unidentified processed meat, a slice of processed cheese, a dash of shredded cabbage or single lettuce leaf, finished with a dollop of sauce described variously as “reddish” or “brownish”.  Some sources, claiming to have received confirmation from the airline, suggest the meat is chicken but speculation on the Internet has long pondered the matter because it seems impossible to tell from the taste (there isn't any) or texture (said to be equally indeterminate).

The Koryo Burger expanded.

Air Koryo did in the past dabble with other culinary offerings.  Some years ago for several months, for reasons unknown, on some inbound flights full meals appeared including curried rice and side dishes and also served was a sort of sandwich wrapped in a Danish pastry but neither innovation lasted and in recent years it's been burgers all the way, Air Koryo clearly having decided to stick to the classics.  The decision may have been in response to public demand given the cult-following the Koryo Burger has attracted, #koryoburger a must-visit tag for any foodie.  Surely not as repugnant as some have alleged, the many reviews of the experience of eating one seem to struggle to find words adequately to convey blandness rather than awfulness although, apart from the plastic packaging which seems to be of a good standard, there’s no aspect of the burger which escapes condemnation, the buns said always to be stale (either through age, incorrect storage or some flaw in the manufacturing process), the meat patty vapid to the point where it’s been suggested the admired wrapping may be more tasty, the lettuce or cabbage usually limp and the smell of the sauce said to suggest some association with wood-working glue although one reviewer mentioned their relief at finding a thin liquid which oozed from the patty was too watery to be blood.  Most however did concede the slice of processed cheese was about the same as plastic cheese anywhere on the planet.  Koryo burgers are served chilled, apparently straight from the fridge and it may be that this accounts for much of the expressed distaste; were they served at the temperature at which burgers are typically enjoyed, it’s not impossible the Koryo Burger would taste much the same as similar offerings anywhere.

The Koryo Burger surprise.  Until opened, the passenger doesn't know whether the burger will contain lettuce leaves or shredded cabbage.

The airline review site Skytrax has for years consistently rated Air Koryo as the world’s worst airline but unfortunately they don’t provide the qualitative data which might indicate what part the Koryo Burger plays in securing the national carrier's perpetual last place.  It may be Skytrax’s reviewers allowed themselves unduly to be influenced by the burger; the customer write-ups of aspects of Air Koryo not touching on anything culinary actually often positive and not infrequently making the point the DPRK carrier is in some ways superior to some in the West.

The vegetarian option.

Neither can it be denied there has been gastronomic progress in the DPRK’s skies.  While in the days of Kim I (Kim Il-sung, 1912-1994; The Great Leader of DPRK 1948-1994) and Kim II (Kim Jong-il, 1941–2011; The Dear Leader of DPRK 1994-2011), the only choice usually was to eat the burger or not eat the burger, in the new age of Kim III (Kim Jong-un, b circa 1982; The Supreme Leader (originally The Great Successor) of DPRK since 2011), there's now a vegetarian option, which is the familiar Koryo Burger but with sliced cherry tomatoes in place of the meat patty.  Few have commented on the veggie burger but one reviewer praised the tomatoes, saying they tasted better than those he ate elsewhere which tended to look nice and bright but usually lacked flavor.

Air Koryo quality control.

Every morning, the DPRK's Supreme Leader and noted gastronome personally selects the buns used to make Koryo Burgers, the buns Kim Jong-un rejects being fed to political prisoners who are said to be grateful to receive them.  The tradition of the daily selection of buns was started by his grandfather (the Great Leader) and carried on by his father (the Dear Leader).  The Supreme Leader's entourage always carry notebooks and pens in case he says anything interesting.  They all write it down. 

Insipid & Sapid

Insipid (pronounced in-sip-id)

(1) Without distinctive, interesting, or stimulating qualities; vapid.

(2) Something or someone dull or uninteresting; lacking character or definition.

(3) Food or drink lacking sufficient taste to be pleasing; bland, unappetizingly flavorless.

1610–1620: From the sixteenth century French insipid (without taste or perceptible flavor), from the Late Latin insipidus (tasteless), the construct being in- (in the sense of negation) + -sipidus (savory; tasty), a form of sapidus (sapid) from sapere (have a taste (and used also to mean “be wise”)).  The figurative (ie not of food or drink) meaning (uninteresting, dull) emerged in English in the 1640s and it’s believed this was under the influence of Medieval Latin or the Romance languages, where it was a secondary sense.  The noun insipidity was in use by the early seventeenth century.  The choice of synonym can depend on whether what is being described is food & drink or something (or someone) else and the options include banal, bland, ho-hum, innocuous, trite, vapid, tasteless, bland, wearish, boring, vacuous, dull, bland, characterless & colourless.  In English, in some senses the use has been influenced by insipient (unwise, foolish, stupid; lacking wisdom).  Insipient was from the Middle English insipient & incipient, from the Old French insipient, ultimately from the Latin īnsipiēns.  For the fastidious, the comparative is “more insipient”, the superlative “most insipient”).  Insipid is an adjective, insipidity & insipidness are nouns and insipidly is an adverb.

Sapid (pronounced sap-id)

(1) Having taste or flavor (and used specifically to mean “savory”).

(2) Agreeable to the taste; palatable.

(3) Agreeable, as to the mind; to one's liking.

1625-1635: From the Latin sapidus (tasty), from sapere or sapiō (to taste).  The original meaning in English was “having the power of affecting the organs of taste (when used of food & drink or other substances)” while the figurative sense suggested something “gratifying to the mind or its tastes”.  The adjective sipid has the same meaning as sapid and was a mid-nineteenth century back-formation from insipid (on the model of “gruntled” from “disgruntled”) whereas sapid was a direct borrowing from Latin.  Both sapid & sipid can be used to mean “having a taste or flavor; savoury” but unlike insipid which remains in wide use (both in the original context of food & drink and figuratively), neither have ever attained much currency and it’s not unreasonable for both to be listed as obsolete.  Sapid is an adjective, sapidity & sapidness are nouns.

The infamously insipid Koryo Burger, the in-flight delicacy offered by Air Koryo, national carrier of Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK; North Korea).

In a sense, what words flourish (or at least endure) in English is because of the operation of something of a popularity contest.  While there are style guides, text books and grammar Nazis to tell us which words to use and in what manner, English has no body such as the French government’s Académie Française (council for matters pertaining to the French language) which publishes the a variety of documents which may be said collectively to define what is “official French”.  The Académie had an interesting political history, beginning as a private venture it received the imprimatur of both church & state when in 1635 it was granted a royal charter by Cardinal Richelieu (1585-1642; chief minister (chancellor or prime-minister) to the King of France 1624-1642) during the reign of Louis XIII (1601–1643; King of France 1610-1643) but was dissolved 1793 during the French Revolution (1789), partly because of the mob’s anti-royalist feelings but also because there was some resentment among the peasantry (an in the provinces generally) to the notion of a Parisian elite deciding whose dialect was “right” and whose was “wrong”.  That’s exactly the same dispute which now bubbles in US universities between (1) those who insist there is “correct” standard English while other forms are dialectal variations (ethnic, regional, class etc) and (2) those who argue for a cultural equivalency between all forms, most notably AAVE (African-American Vernacular English) and its many forks.  In 1795 the new regime in France created the Institut de France (Institute of France) as a kind of clearing house for all matters relating to what was “acceptable” French culture, absorbing some pre-existing scientific, literary and artistic bodies and it was to the institute that Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821; leader of the French Republic 1799-1804 & Emperor of the French from 1804-1814 & 1815) in 1803 restored the Académie Française as a division.

Portrait of Goethe, oil on paper by Italian artist Elia Bonetti (b 1983).

Spain’s Real Academia Española (Royal Academy of Spain) is a similar body but perhaps surprisingly (given all the stereotypes of the Prussians) there is in Germany no central authority defining the German language, several organizations and institutions working (cooperatively and not) together standardize and update things.  The most authoritative body for German orthography is the Rat für deutsche Rechtschreibung (Council for German Orthography), the membership of which includes representatives from other German-speaking countries (Austria, Switzerland et al) and its mandate extends to overseeing spelling and orthographic rules, something not without controversy, especially since the great spelling “reform” of 1996.  In the spirit of the post-1945 spirit of avoiding where possible the creation of all-powerful single institutions, it’s the Duden dictionary and Institut für Deutsche Sprache (Institute for the German Language) which exert great influence in in maintaining and documenting German vocabulary, grammar and usage, but both tend to be observational, recording changes in the language rather than seeking to enforce rules (ie they are descriptive rather than prescriptive).  German thus evolves through the combined influence of these institutions, public usage, and scholarly input, rather than through a single authoritative academy and internationally it’s probably the Goethe-Institut (Goethe Institute, named after the German author & philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832)) which most promotes the study of German language & culture through its worldwide network of some 160 centres.

English is more democratic still, the survival of words and grammatical forms dependent on the users and even before the British Empire saw the tongue spread around the world the foreign influences were profound, the Latin, Greek, French & Germanic threads the most obvious and even to speak of the “Old English” is misleading to all but those in the field because to most, the “Old English” really isn’t recognizable as “English”.  Not only does modern English thus evolve but so do the other blends such as “Spanglish” (a hybrid of Spanish & English), Hinglish (Hindi & English) and its absurd to speak of “pure English”, even the way BBC announcers used to speak (in the so-called “RP” (received pronunciation) often including fragments picked up from the Raj and around the world.  While the Académie Française may try to keep French as pure as possible, English shamelessly is linguistically slutty.

Lindsay Lohan (with body-double) during filming of Irish Wish (Netflix, 2024) which the Daily Beast concluded was exactly “insipid”.  The car is a Triumph TR4 (1961-1967), one of the early versions with a live rear axle, a detail probably of no significance in the plot-line.

In this democratic way, insipid has endured because it fills a niche that sapid & sipid never found, in both usage & meaning.  Vividly, insipid conveys the notion of something lacking flavor, excitement, or interest, whether literally (vapid food or drink) or figuratively (dull conversation or ideas).  This negative association has a broad and (regrettably) frequent application in everyday language, there so often being a need to decry things or people as uninteresting or failing to make an impact.  By contrast, although sapid & sipid both mean “food having flavour”, there’s less need because that’s expected and what’s usually sought is a way to say the quality is lacking and terms of emphasis came to be preferred: “flavoursome” “tasty” and such taking over although none were as precise as the practical & versatile “insipid” which proved the perfect one-word descriptor whether literally or figuratively.  Insipid is useful too because it’s nuanced in that it although used usually as negative, it’s also a “neutral word” in the sense of “bland”.  When the Daily Beast was searching for similes & metaphors in their review of Irish Wish (released in 2024 as the second edition of Lindsay Lohan’s three film Netflix deal), they opted also to “damn with faint praise” observing because the Netflix’s target audience “merely want to watch something that isn’t insipid and horribly made”, maybe the film (sort of) succeeded.  So insipid has survived because it fulfils needs while sapid & sipid are now little more than linguistic curiosities.

Insipid, sipid & sapid: The votes are in.

Because of the way Google harvests data for their ngrams, they’re not literally a tracking of the use of a word in society but can be usefully indicative of certain trends, (although one is never quite sure which trend(s)), especially over decades.  As a record of actual aggregate use, ngrams are not wholly reliable because: (1) the sub-set of texts Google uses is slanted towards the scientific & academic and (2) the technical limitations imposed by the use of OCR (optical character recognition) when handling older texts of sometime dubious legibility (a process AI should improve).  Where numbers bounce around, this may reflect either: (1) peaks and troughs in use for some reason or (2) some quirk in the data harvested.

Inculcate

Inculcate (pronounced in-kuhl-keyt)

(1) To implant ideas, opinions or concepts in others, usually by forceful or insistent repetition or admonition; persistently to teach.

(2) To cause or influence others to accept an idea or feeling; to induce understanding or a particular sentiment in a person or persons.

1540s: From the Latin inculcātus past participle of inculcāre (to trample, impress, stuff in, force upon) and perfect passive participle of inculcō (impress upon, force upon).  The construct of inculcāre was in- + calcāre (to trample), from calcō (to tread upon), from calx (heel).  The Latin prefix in- was from the Proto-Italic en-, from the primitive Indo-European n̥- (not), the zero-grade form of the negative particle ne (not) and was akin to ne-, nē & nī.  In Modern English it is from the Middle English in-, from Old English in- (in, into), from the Proto-Germanic in, from the primitive Indo-European en.  The meanings in English upon adoption in the mid-sixteenth century (act of impressing upon the mind by repeated admonitions; forcible or persistent teaching) are agreed but some etymologists note the source of the noun inculcation might have been different, coming directly from the Late Latin inculcationem (nominative inculcatio), the noun of action from past-participle stem of inculcāre.  Inculcate is a verb, inculcation & inculcator are nouns, inculcates, inculcating, & inculcated are verbs and inculcative & inculcatory are adjectives; the most common noun plural is inculcations.

Inculcation and inculcators

The word inculcate sits on the spectrum of descriptors of the process by which an individual or institution can attempt impose a doctrine, belief or construct of reality on others, the range extending from suggestion & persuasion to instill, ingrain, propaganda, inculcation & brainwashing.  It thus belongs in the class called loaded words (those which, usually for historic or associative reasons, have come to possess implications “loading” the meaning beyond the technical definition.  For most purposes, those who wish to apply the process of inculcation for some purpose usually cloak their intent with other words; "inspire" often appears in vapid corporate mission-statements but is tainted by its association with advertising and a better choice is the less obviously manipulative "instil".

Professor Noam Chomsky.

The classic examples of inculcation are the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century which existed as political entities during the brief few decades when states could (1) control the mass distribution of ideas and information while (2) simultaneously restricting and dissemination of alternatives.  Such states still exist but technological changes have rendered their attempts less effective.  Political and linguistic theorists have developed constructs describing the way by which, even in nominally non-totalitarian states, corporate and political interests can inculcate collective values and opinions.  One celebrated discussion of the process is in Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988) by Noam Chomsky (b 1928; Laureate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona & Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)) and US economist Edward S Herman (1925-2017).

The phrase "the manufacture of consent" had appeared in the book Public Opinion, published in 1922 by US journalist Walter Lippmann (1889–1974), a work which explored the interaction between the mass of the public and the techniques of inculcation used by government (and others) to shape collective opinion and expectation.  Public Opinion remains text useful for its analysis and the structural models presented although now few would (at least publicly) agree with his elitist solutions to the problems identified.  Like Chomsky & Herman’s Manufacturing Consent, it is a helpful reminder that inculcation is a set of techniques not restricted to the totalitarian regimes with which it tends most to be associated.  The message may differ but a hegemony will always attempt to ensure the world view essential to their survival is the one which prevails, the notion of “consent” so important because as British colonial official Thomas Pownall (1722-1805; Governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay 1757-1760) repeatedly warned his uncomprehending government during the rumblings which would lead to the American Declaration of Independence: “You may exert power over, but you can never govern an unwilling people.”.  That is something understood, whether by a president in the Oval Office, an ayatollah in his chamber or the führer in his bunker although some accept that if they can’t be governed, they can be suppressed and, as long as the resource allocation remains possible, that can for decades work.

Inculcation begins at school.

The best documented case study in inculcation on a population-wide scale remains that undertaken by the Nazi State (1933-1945) in Germany and many memoirs of era record the way Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) would acknowledge what he’d learned of this from the Roman Catholic Church, even at times admitting it was inevitable the two-thousand year old institution (and their many schools) would still be flourishing in Germany long after he had departed the Earth.  He also understood how critical it was the process began young because it was in school he had been inculcated with the framework on which later he would build his awful intellectual structures.  Social Historian Richard Grunberger (1924-2005) in A Social History of the Third Reich (1971) reported that although Hitler had scant regard for most of his school teachers, he had high regard for his history master, Leopold Pötsch (or Poetsch) (1853–1942), a rabid German Nationalist (like many who lived in Upper Austria).  From Dr Poetsch the future Führer imbibed the heady cocktail of a romanticized tale of Germany from Charlemagne (748–814; (retrospectively) the first Holy Roman Emperor 800-814) to Otto von Bismarck (1815-1989; Chancellor of the German Empire 1871-1890).

In Mein Kampf (My Struggle, 1925), Hitler would write that his favorite teacher: “...used our budding nationalistic fanaticism as a means of educating us, frequently appealing to our sense of national honor. By this alone he was able to discipline us little ruffians more easily than would have been possible by any other means. This teacher made history my favorite subject. And indeed, though he had no such intention, it was then that I became a little revolutionary. For who could have studied German history under such a teacher without becoming an enemy of the state which, through its ruling house, exerted so disastrous an influence on the destinies of the nation? And who could retain his loyalty to a dynasty which in past and present betrayed the needs of the German people again and again for shameless private advantage?”  Upon assuming power in 1933, Hitler almost immediately deployed the education system for the purpose of inculcating the youth with Nazi ideology, the institution ideal for the purpose because it was hierarchical and didactic.  Education in “racial awareness” (the core Nazi tenant) was based on the notion of “racial duty to the national community”, that there were “worthy & unworthy" races” and while it’s misleading to suggest there’s a lineal (and certainly not a planned) path to the Holocaust, the connection must be noted.  If the entire Nazi project of inculcation can be reduced to just two themes, it’s (1) the sense of race struggle and (2) the readiness for the coming war.

Flummery & Pabulum

Flummery (pronounced fluhm-uh-ree)

(1) Oatmeal or flour boiled with water until thick (historically, a slightly tart, jelly-like food of Welsh origin, made from extensively boiling oats, then boiling down the liquid extracted from it).

(2) A fruit custard or blancmange,  any of several bland, gelatinous foodstuffs, made usually from stewed fruit and thickened with oatmeal, cornstarch or flour.

(3) In speech or writing, complete nonsense; foolish humbug; words devoid of meaning (applied especially of flattery); deceptive or blustering speech (applied especially in politics and, as an interjection, an expression of contemptuous disbelief).

(4) Pretentious trappings, useless embellishments or ornaments intended to impress (applied to architecture, interior decorating, fashion etc).

1623: From the Welsh llymru (which was assimilated into English with an –ery ending) of uncertain origin but there may be some link with llymrig (slippery).  The figurative use to describe flattery or empty, meaningless talk, is from the 1740s.  Flummery is a noun; the noun plural is flummeries.

The Welsh llymru was “a jelly derived from oatmeal”, the name first noted in English poet Gervase Markham's (circa 1568–1637) Countrey Contentments (1623) and was known also as wash-brew although in Lancashire and Cheshire, it was called flamerie or flumerie.  The modern spelling was one of the variant forms which in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries also included thlummery and flamery.  By the nineteenth century, flummery had become the standard form, both to describe bland, unsatisfying food and unsubstantial talk or writing, and nonsense.  The US food with similar meanings is Mead Johnson's pablum, a soft, bland cereal, intended for infants, invalids and the weak.  In post-war Australia, a flummery was the name given to a mousse dessert made with beaten evaporated milk, sugar, and gelatine.  Also made using jelly crystals, mousse flummery became popular as an inexpensive alternative to traditional cream-based mousse.  In the US, it was named blancmange.

Pabulum (pronounced pab-yuh-luhm)

(1) Something that nourishes an animal or vegetable organism; food; nutriments.

(2) Figuratively, food for thought (can be neutral or positive but is more commonly used of material thought bland, dull or intellectually undemanding). 

(3) Material that fuels a fire (now rare except in technical documents).

1670-1680: From the Classical Latin pābulum (food, nourishment; fodder or pasture for animals; nourishment for the mind, food for thought), the construct being pā(scō) (to nourish) +‎ bulum (the suffix denoting an instrument).  Root was the primitive Indo-European peh-dlom, the construct being pe- (to feed) or peh- (to protect; to shepherd) + -dlom (a variant of -trom (the suffix denoting a tool or instrument)).  In the early eighteenth century the adjective pabulary (of or pertaining to pabulum (in the sense of food) and from the Latin pabulosus (abounding in fodder)) enjoyed a brief vogue as a noun (an eating place or a counter in an inn from which meals were served).  Pablum is a noun, pabular is a verb, pabulous, pabular & pabulary are adjectives; the noun plural is pabulums.

Crooked Spiro & Tricky Dick: Spiro Agnew and Richard Nixon.

The word in the late seventeenth century was used of food in the widest sense (ie that which feeds or nourishes) and that applied to that taken by people, animals, agricultural crops (in the sense of fertilizer) and even the material used to fuel a fire.  A trademark of manufacturers Mead Johnson, Pablum is a soft, bland cereal, intended for infants, invalids and the weak which was released in 1932 and it was this association which was picked up in the figurative use made of pabulum (to describe vapid or mushy political prose) in a speech made on 11 September 1970 by Spiro Agnew (1918–1996; US vice president 1969-1973).  The tone of the speech (though perhaps not the labored syntax which would be rejected as TLDR (too long, didn’t read) in the social media age) would be familiar to modern audiences used to political figures attacking the news media and was a critique of what later Republicans would label “fake news”.

“In the United States today, we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism.  They have formed their own 4-H Club - the “hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history”  “…As long as they have their own association, crooks will flourish.  As long as they have their own television networks, paid for by their own advertisers, they will continue to have their own commentators.  It is time for America to quit catering to the pabulum peddlers and the permissive.  It is time to speak up forcefully for the conservative cause."

It wasn’t a new complaint for the aggressively alliterative Agnew and certainly represented well the opinions of Richard Nixon (1913–1994; US president 1969-1974) whose long list (and it was literally a list) of enemies included many journalists, editors and media proprietors.  In November 1969, Agnew had appeared at the Midwestern Regional Republican Conference in Des Moines, Iowa where he attacked “…this little group of men” who he accused of wielding “a free hand in selecting, presenting and interpreting” the news.  Intellectuals, he labeled “…an effete corps of impudent snobs”, a sentiment Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021) would later recycle, the phraseology simplified so his “deplorables” would comprehend.  Agnew’s speeches are not classics in the art of rhetoric but remain landmarks in the culture wars which began in the early 1960s and which are being fought still.

Concurrent with though not related to the Watergate affair, in early 1973, Agnew was under investigation on suspicion of conspiracy, bribery, extortion and tax fraud.  While for months denying everything (always good legal advice which succeeds more often than it should), Agnew eventually was forced to negotiate a plea-bargain whereby he would resign from office but avoid jail.  On 10 October 1973, Agnew pleaded no contest to a single felony charge of tax evasion and resigned, not a few of those he’d earlier derided as “crooks” not reluctant to ensure the juxtaposition was well publicized.  Facing impeachment for his role in the Watergate affair cover-up, President Nixon (who earlier had made his soon infamous “I am not a crook” speech, followed within a year, saved from prosecution by a presidential pardon, granted by Gerald Ford (1913–2006; US president 1974-1977) who had been Nixon’s choice to replace Agnew as vice-president.

Lemon, Orange & Passionfruit Flummery

Ingredients

115g (½ cup) caster sugar

2 tablespoons plain flour

1 tablespoon powdered gelatine

250ml (1 cup) water

2 oranges, juiced & strained

1 lemon, juiced & strained

125ml (½ cup) fresh passionfruit pulp

Whipped cream, to serve

2 tablespoons passionfruit pulp, (extra, to spread on top)

Method

(1) Place the sugar, flour, gelatine, water, orange juice and lemon juice in a medium saucepan. Use a balloon whisk to whisk until well combined. Bring to the boil over medium heat, stirring constantly. Simmer for 2 minutes.

(2) Pour the mixture into a heatproof bowl and place in the fridge for 1 hour or until the mixture begins to set around the edges. Stir in the passionfruit and transfer to a large bowl. Use an electric beater to beat for 15 minutes or until the mixture is thick and pale.

(3) Pour the mixture evenly into four 310ml (1¼ cups) serving glasses. Cover the glass tightly with plastic wrap and place in the fridge for 1-2 hours or until the mixture is set.

(4) Serve topped with whipped cream and with extra passionfruit pulp.

Aesthetic

Aesthetic (pronounced es-thet-ik or ees-thet-ik (mostly non-US))

(1) Relating to the philosophy of aesthetics; concerned with what is regarded as attractive and what is not.

(2) Relating to the science of aesthetics; concerned with the study of the mind and emotions in relation to the sense of beauty.

(3) Having a sense of the beautiful; characterized by a love of beauty (and, used loosely: “good taste”).

(4) Relating to, involving, or concerned with pure emotion and sensation as opposed to pure intellectuality.

(5) The philosophical theory or set of principles governing the idea of beauty at a given time and place.

(6) A particular individual’s set of ideas about style and taste, along with its expression:

(7) An individual’s (or a collective’s) set of principles or worldview as expressed through outward appearance, behavior, or actions.

1798: From the mid-eighteenth century German Ästhetisch or the German-derived French esthétique, from the New Latin, ultimately from the Ancient Greek aisthetikos (pertaining to sense perception, perceptible, sensitive perceptive and (of things) perceptible), the construct being aisthēt(ḗs) (aesthete) + -ikos (-ic), from aisthanesthai (to perceive (by the senses or by the mind), to feel, from the primitive Indo-European awis-dh-yo-, from the root au- (to perceive).  The ikos suffix was from κός (kós) with an added i, from i-stems such as φυσι-κός (phusi-kós) (natural), through the same process by which ῑ́της (ī́tēs) developed from της (tēs), occurring in some original case and later used freely.  It was cognate with the Latin icus and the Proto-Germanic igaz, from which came Old English iġ (which in Modern English ultimately was resolved as y), the Old High German ig and the Gothic eigs.  The historic alternative spelling is æsthetics, still see in the odd literary novel.  Derived forms include the adjectives nonaesthetic (which if hyphenated seems to be used as a neutral descriptive and if not, as a critique) & pseudoaesthetic (which is always in criticism).  Aesthetic is a noun & adjective, aesthete & aestheticism are nouns and aesthetically is an adverb; the noun plural is aesthetics.

The noun aesthete (person of advanced and fine artistic sensibilities) dates from the early 1880s and was from Ancient Greek αἰσθητής (aisthētḗs) (one who perceives), the construct being aisthē- (variant stem of aisthánesthai (to perceive)) + -tēs (the Greek noun suffix denoting agent).  It was a Victorian back-formation from aesthetics and there no exact synonym, the closet being “connoisseur” but it conveys a slightly different implication and the derived noun hyperaesthete is used sometimes as a term of derision directed at the “excessively civilized”.  The rarely used alternative spellings esthete & æsthete are now used only as literary devices and are otherwise obsolete.  Aesthete is a noun and aesthetic is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is aesthetes and the idea long predates the word, descriptions of such figures appearing (sometimes as slurs hinting at a lack of manliness) in texts from Antiquity and aesthetician (professor of taste) was in use by 1829, aestheticist by 1868.  The original edition (1911) of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary (COD) noted that in English university slang the opposite of an aesthete was a “hearty”, the former tribe devotes of John Ruskin (1819–1900), the latter lot lusting after a rugby blue.

Ms Andrea Ivanova who is pursuing (from head to toe) a particular aesthetic.

For specific purposes, estheticians can induce localized instances of angioedema (in pathology, a swelling that occurs just beneath the surface of the skin or mucous membranes).  Ms Andrea Ivanova (b 1998), a student from the Bulgarian capital Sofia, has had over twenty injections of hyaluronic acid in her quest to have the world’s plumpest lips but, seeking additional fullness, indicated recently she intends to pursue another course of injections.  Ms Ivanova is also a collector of Barbie dolls, the aesthetic of which she admires, and these are said to provide the inspiration for some of the other body modifications and adjustments she's undertaken.  Like the lips, other bits remain a work-in-progress, Ms Ivanova documenting things on Instagram where she enjoys some 32K followers.

The alternative spelling esthetic began life as one of those Americanisms which annoy some but it reflected simply the wholly sensible approach in US English that it’s helpful if spelling follows pronunciation.  However, in the early twentieth century the US cosmetic surgery industry (even then inventive and profitable), re-purposed the word; linguistic differentiation to create product differentiation: “esthetic surgery”, the business of performing surgery for aesthetic purposes rather than reasons strictly medical or reconstructive and the most significant figure in this was the German-Jewish cosmetic physician Jacques Joseph (1865–1934), now remembered as the “father of modern cosmetic surgery”.  Under the auspices of first the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS, 1931) and the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ASAPS, 1967), the business of esthetic surgery has since boomed and related (even if remotely) professions such as nail technicians, the lip-plumpers and the body-piercers also append “esthetic” to their advertising; the first “estheticians” were the skin care specialists (exfoliation, massage, aromatherapy, facials and such) but the title soon proliferated.  

A classic reference which can be read for pleasure (by word nerds).

JA Cuddon (1928-1996) was a writer of extraordinary range and one of the great characters of twentieth century literary life in England and while some of his works sold more, none have been of more enduring than his typically comprehensive and amusing Dictionary of Literary Terms & Literary Theory, first published in 1977 by Penguin and the entry on aestheticism is typical of his style, beginning with the observation the term was “'pregnant' with many connotations” before exploring the history.  In English, “aesthetic” first came into wider use after appearing in translations of the work of the German philosopher of the Enlightenment Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) although the original use was in the classically correct sense “science which treats of the conditions of sensuous perception” and Kant’s use had been an attempt at reclamation on behalf of academic philosophy in reaction to his fellow German philosopher Alexander Baumgarten (1714–1762) heretically using it in his Aesthetica (1750) to mean “criticism of taste”, something which so appealed to English speakers it became (despite the doughty scholarly rearguard) after the 1830s (in the wake of the Romantic poets) the dominant meaning, freeing the word from the jealous grasp of the philosophers.  This was cemented by the literary critic Walter Pater (1839–1894 and one of the century’s most exquisite stylists of language) who in 1868 applied it to the l'art pour l'art (art for art's sake) movement, a place which proved its natural home.  The English academic polymath William Whewell (1794–1866) had suggested callesthetics for “the science of the perception of the beautiful” but that never caught on.  The shift is illustrated by the track of the adjective which was in 1798 was recorded to mean “of or pertaining to sensual perception” while by 1821 there was the parallel “of or pertaining to appreciation of the beautiful.”

Cuddon defined an aesthete as “one who pursues and is devoted to the 'beautiful' in art, music and literature” while aestheticisrn was the “term given to a movement, a cult, a mode of sensibility (a way of looking at and feeling about things) in the nineteenth century [which] fundamentally… entailed the point of view that art is self-sufficient and need fulfil no other purpose than its own ends. In other words, art is an end in itself and need not be (or should not be) didactic, politically committed, propagandist, moral - or anything else but itself; and it should not be judged by any non-aesthetic criteria such as whether or not it is useful).”  Cuddon reminded his readers that Kant as well as Goethe (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749–1832), Friedrich Schelling (1775–1854) & Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805) were all in the vanguard of the l'art pour l'art “movement or cult”, arguing “art must be autonomous”, the political implication being “the artist should not be beholden to anyone.  From this, in turn, it followed that the artist was someone special, apart, from others and from this came the post-Romantic idea of the artist as superior to ordinary mortals”, a view which infected many who concluded they deserved to be judged on the basis of being artists, rather than by virtue of the art they produced.  In the dark mist of late Romanticism, this had a certain appeal but it cumulated in post-modernism and while it’s true that even in the nineteenth century high art there really wasn’t one agreed construct of the aesthetic, by the late twentieth century there were so many that Cuddon was probably right in suggesting it was the “long-term result of Romantic subjectivism and self-culture; of the cult of the individual ego and sensibility.”

Cuddon detected “a widespread disenchantment in the literature of the aesthetes, and especially in their poetry” which he contrasted with the popular novelists of the era such as early realists like Charles Dickens (1812–1870) or Émile Zola (1840–1902).  The poets showed a “tendency to withdrawal or aversion”, aspiring to “sensuousness and to what has become known as ‘pure poetry'” and while that was criticized by figures as diverse as Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881, UK prime-minister 1868 & 1874-1880) and Karl Marx (1818-1883), at “its best, aestheticism was a revitalizing influence in an age of ugliness, brutality dreadful inequality & oppression, complacency, hypocrisy and Philistinism.  It was a genuine search for beauty and a realization that the beautiful has an independent value.  At its worst it deteriorated into posturing affectation and mannerism, to vapid idealism and indeed to a kind of silliness which is not wholly dead.”  Cuddon was writing in the mid-1970s and it’s doubtful anything he saw in the last decades of his life much changed his mind.

Deconstructing the Lindsay Lohan aesthetic

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.  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”.

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.

Other aesthethetics

A functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine.

The mysterious “experimental aesthetics” is a discipline in psychology taking “a subject-based, inductive approach to aesthetics”; it was founded by German physicist and experimental psychologist Gustav Fechner (1801–1887) who had a background in psychophysics before changing direction so experimental aesthetics is the second oldest research area in psychology.  It is a field of study which investigates how individuals perceive and evaluate aesthetic experiences using empirical methods, merging principles and techniques from psychology, neuroscience and the arts to understand the underlying mechanisms of aesthetic appreciation and creativity.  Essentially, it was the examination of the way people perceive beauty, art and design, and how they form aesthetic judgments, the resulting metrics gleaned from measuring sensory processes, cognitive mechanisms and emotional responses.  Given these things are inherently hard to quantify in a way which is both statistically sound and has some meaning, what Fechner was attempting was really quite adventurous and those who have continued his work have produced something sprawlingly interdisciplinary, involving collaborations between psychologists, neuroscientists, artists, designers, and philosophers, all with their own traditions of measurement. From this interplay emerged the sub-field of neuroaesthetics which focuses on the neural basis of aesthetic experiences, something made possible by the development of various brain imaging techniques like Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and the electroencephalogram (EEG).  Being academics who publish, experimental aesthetics has also yielded theoretical models, the most pleasing of which is the “processing fluency theory of aesthetic pleasure” which explores what contributes to the ease with which information is processed in the human mind, a significant factor in the way people experience beauty.

In the same vein as ethnomusicology (the study of non-Western musical forms), ethnoaesthetics is the study or description of “the aesthetics specific to or adopted by a particular culture”.  Perhaps surprisingly, both continue to be used although some might consider them at least microaggressions which can be read as implying a cultural hierarchy and even if not, it certainly suggests “separate but equal”, a concept with its own troubled history.  Phonoaesthetics is the study of the aesthetic properties of sounds, particularly in the context of language. The phono- prefix (relating to sound) was from the Ancient Greek φωνή (phōnḗ) (voice, sound).  The word φωνή primarily referred to articulated human or animal sounds in contrast to ἠχή (from which is derived “echo”) which referred to sounds in general.  Phonoaesthetics involves the analysis of how certain sounds, words, or phonetic patterns are perceived as pleasing or displeasing to the ear, the field combining elements of linguistics, psychology, and aesthetics to explore the sensory and emotional responses elicited by different sounds.  If ever you’ve wondered why a word like “succulent” is so “delicious” to say, phonoaesthetics has the answer.  The inherent beauty or appeal of sounds exists both in isolation and within linguistic structures, most obviously in the phonemes, syllables & prosody but there are also associative factors; a word with a positive association can impart pleasure and that experience can exist across a culture or be specific to one individual.  Somaesthetics is an interdisciplinary field that studies the body (soma, from the New Latin, from the Ancient Greek σῶμα (sôma) (body) as both a site of sensory appreciation (aesthesis) and creative self-fashioning.  Not taken seriously by all critics, it’s seems essentially the “New Age” with an academic gloss.

Indolent

Indolent (pronounced in-dl-uhnt)

(1) Having or showing a disposition to avoid exertion; slothful; disliking work or effort; lazy; idle.

(2) In pathology, causing little or no pain; inactive or relatively benign.

(3) In medicine (applied especially to painless ulcers), slow to heal.

1663: From either the French indolent or directly from the Medieval Latin indolentem, from the Latin indolent- (stem of indolēns), the construct being in- (not) + dolent- (stem of dolēns (pain)), present participle of dolēre (to be painful, be in pain) from dolēre (to grieve, to cause distress).  The sense of "living easily, slothful”, dates from 1710, a sense said (certainly by English etymologists) perhaps developed in French.  The synonyms for both meanings are many, typically words like slow, inactive, sluggish & torpid.  The meanings related to medical matters are now entirely technical and restricted to the profession, both generalized as “a slowly progressive medical condition associated with little or no pain” and specifically in conditions such as lowest of three grades of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL), refractory corneal ulcers and a slow-growing carditis, a form of infective endocarditis that may also indicate rheumatic fever.  In general use, the word is now used exclusively to indicate degrees of idleness.  Indolent is an adjective (the occasional use as a noun remains non-standard), indolency & indolence are nouns and indolently is an adverb; the noun plural is indolences.

Living to almost 100, the mathematician & philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) lived a productive life and his output was prodigious.  However, although he admitted taking seriously being told in his youth “the devil makes work for idle hands” and spending his industriously, in 1932 he felt moved to publish an essay he called In Praise of Idleness, written at a time when many anxious to work were suffering from an imposed indolence: “I think that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous, and that what needs to be preached in modern industrial countries is quite different from what always has been preached.”  Some five years earlier he’d delivered one of his more famous addresses, Why I Am Not a Christian (1927), so it’s unlikely his thought owed much to scripture such as Matthew 6:28 (“And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin” (King James Version (KJV, 1611)) which was about Christ telling His disciples to abandon anxiety and trust in God to provide.  Instead, he suggested, in what seems a very modern view, that “…a great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by the belief in the virtuousness of work, and that the road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organized diminution of work..”  He went on to review the evolution of the post-feudal economic models (in a kind of neo-Marxist analysis) and offered an alternative vision and, were he alive today to survey the scene, he would have been disappointed to realize had never been achieved:

“Above all, there will be happiness and joy of life, instead of frayed nerves, weariness, and dyspepsia. The work exacted will be enough to make leisure delightful, but not enough to produce exhaustion. Since men will not be tired in their spare time, they will not demand only such amusements as are passive and vapid. At least one per cent will probably devote the time not spent in professional work to pursuits of some public importance, and, since they will not depend upon these pursuits for their livelihood, their originality will be unhampered, and there will be no need to conform to the standards set by elderly pundits. But it is not only in these exceptional cases that the advantages of leisure will appear. Ordinary men and women, having the opportunity of a happy life, will become more kindly and less persecuting and less inclined to view others with suspicion. The taste for war will die out, partly for this reason, and partly because it will involve long and severe work for all. Good nature is, of all moral qualities, the one that the world needs most, and good nature is the result of ease and security, not of a life of arduous struggle. Modern methods of production have given us the possibility of ease and security for all; we have chosen instead to have overwork for some and starvation for others. Hitherto we have continued to be as energetic as we were before there were machines. In this we have been foolish, but there is no reason to go on being foolish for ever.”

An indolent Lindsay Lohan, Los Angeles, 2012.

Nor is it likely the Romantic poet John Keats (1795-1821) gave much thought to Matthew 6:28 while writing Ode on Indolence (1819).  There is some scriptural imagery in the poetry of Keats but the debt is more to the Bible as a literary work than anything overtly religious, Keats more influenced by classical mythology, nature, and the Romantic ideals of beauty and truth.

Ode on Indolence by John Keats

They toil not, neither do they spin.’
One morn before me were three figures seen,
    With bowèd necks, and joinèd hands, side-faced;
And one behind the other stepp’d serene,
    In placid sandals, and in white robes graced;
        They pass’d, like figures on a marble urn,
    When shifted round to see the other side;
They came again; as when the urn once more
        Is shifted round, the first seen shades return;
    And they were strange to me, as may betide
With vases, to one deep in Phidian lore.
 
How is it, Shadows! that I knew ye not?
    How came ye muffled in so hush a mask?
Was it a silent deep-disguisèd plot
    To steal away, and leave without a task
        My idle days? Ripe was the drowsy hour;
    The blissful cloud of summer-indolence
Benumb’d my eyes; my pulse grew less and less;
        Pain had no sting, and pleasure’s wreath no flower:
    O, why did ye not melt, and leave my sense
Unhaunted quite of all but—nothingness?
 
A third time pass’d they by, and, passing, turn’d
    Each one the face a moment whiles to me;
Then faded, and to follow them I burn’d
    And ached for wings, because I knew the three;
        The first was a fair Maid, and Love her name;
    The second was Ambition, pale of cheek,
And ever watchful with fatiguèd eye;
        The last, whom I love more, the more of blame
    Is heap’d upon her, maiden most unmeek,—
I knew to be my demon Poesy.
 
They faded, and, forsooth! I wanted wings:
    O folly! What is Love? and where is it?
And for that poor Ambition! it springs
    From a man’s little heart’s short fever-fit;
        For Poesy!—no,—she has not a joy,—
    At least for me,—so sweet as drowsy noons,
And evenings steep’d in honey’d indolence;
        O, for an age so shelter’d from annoy,
    That I may never know how change the moons,
Or hear the voice of busy common-sense!
 
And once more came they by:—alas! wherefore?
    My sleep had been embroider’d with dim dreams;
My soul had been a lawn besprinkled o’er
    With flowers, and stirring shades, and baffled beams:
        The morn was clouded, but no shower fell,
    Tho’ in her lids hung the sweet tears of May;
The open casement press’d a new-leaved vine,
    Let in the budding warmth and throstle’s lay;
        O Shadows! ’twas a time to bid farewell!
Upon your skirts had fallen no tears of mine.
 
So, ye three Ghosts, adieu! Ye cannot raise
    My head cool-bedded in the flowery grass;
For I would not be dieted with praise,
    A pet-lamb in a sentimental farce!
        Fade softly from my eyes, and be once more
    In masque-like figures on the dreamy urn;
Farewell! I yet have visions for the night,
    And for the day faint visions there is store;
Vanish, ye Phantoms! from my idle spright,
    Into the clouds, and never more return!