Vernacular

Vernacular (pronounced vuh-nak- yuh-ler (U) or ver-nak-yuh-ler (Non-U))

(1) In linguistics, the dialect of the native or indigenous people as opposed to that of those (in Western terms) the literary or learned; the native speech or language of a place; the language of a people or a national language.

(2) In literature, expressed or written in the native language of a place, as literary works.

(3) Using, of or related to such language.

(4) Plain, everyday speech or dialect, including colloquialisms, as opposed to standard, literary, liturgical, or scientific idiom.

(5) In architecture, a style of architecture exemplifying the commonest techniques, decorative features, and materials of a particular historical period, region, or group of people.

(6) Noting or pertaining to the common name for a plant or animal, as distinguished from its Latin scientific name.

(7) The language or vocabulary peculiar to a class or profession.

(8) Any medium or mode of expression that reflects popular taste or indigenous styles.

(9) In linguistic anthropology, language lacking standardization or a written form.

1599: From the Latin vernāculus (household, domestic, indigenous, of or pertaining to home-born slaves), a diminutive of verna (a native; a home-born slave (slave born in the master's household)) although etymologists note the lack of evidence to support this derivation, verna of Etruscan origin. Now used in English almost always in the sense of Latin vernacula vocabula, in reference to language, the noun sense “native speech or language of a place” dating from 1706.  In technical use, linguistic anthropologists use neo-vernacular and unvernacular while in medicine, epidemiologists distinguish vernacular diseases (restricted to a defined group) from those induced by external influences.  There are also variations within the vernacular, concepts like “street vernacular” or “mountain vernacular” used to differentiate sub-sets of native languages, based on geography or some demographic; in this the idea is similar to expressions like jargon, argot, dialect or slang.  Vernacular is a noun & adjective, vernacularism & vernacularist are nouns and vernacularly is an adverb; the noun plural is vernaculars.

Cannabis (known also as marijuana) is a psychoactive drug from the cannabis plant (Cannabis sativa, Cannabis indica, Cannabis ruderalis).  In the vernacular it's "weed" or any one of literally hundreds of other terms.

Vernacular and other Latin

In the intricate world of linguistics, there are many types of Latin, many of them technical differentiations between the historic later variations (Medieval Latin; New Latin, Enlightenment Latin) from what is (a little misleadingly) called Classical Latin (or just “Latin”) but there was also a Latin vernacular referred to as vulgar Latin, one of many forks:

Vulgar Latin (also as popular Latin or colloquial Latin) was the spectrum of non-formal registers of Latin spoken from the Late Roman Republic onward and the what over centuries evolved into a number of Romance languages.  It was the common speech of the ancient Romans, which is distinguished from standard literary Latin and is the ancestor of the Romance languages.

Dog Latin (also as bog Latin (ie “toilet humor”)): Bad, erroneous pseudo-Latin, often amusing constructions designed to resemble the appearance and especially the sound of Latin, many of which were coined by students in English schools & universities.  The “joke names” used in Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979) (Sillius Soddus, Biggus Dickus & Nortius Maximus) are examples of dog Latin.

Pig Latin: A type of wordplay in which (English) words are altered by moving the leading phonetic of a word to the end and appending -ay, except when the word begins with a vowel, in which case "-way" is suffixed with no leading phonetic change.

Apothecary's Latin: Latin as it was supposed spoken by a barbarian, reflecting the (probably not wholly unjustified) prejudices of the educated at the pretentions of tradesmen and shopkeepers.

Legal Latin: Latin phrases or terms used as a shorthand encapsulation of legal doctrines, rules, precepts and concepts).

Medical Latin: This evolved into a (more or less) standardized list of medical abbreviations, based on the Latin originals and used as a specific technical shorthand.

Barracks Latin: (pseudo Latin on the lines of dog Latin but usually with some military flavor, often noted for a tendency to vulgarity).

Ecclesiastical Latin: (also as Church Latin or Liturgical Latin), a fork of Latin developed in late Antiquity to suit the particular discussions of Christianity and still used in Christian liturgy, theology, and church administration (events in 2013 confirming that papal resignations are written and delivered in ecclesiastical Latin).  Technically, it’s a fork of Classical Latin but includes words from Vulgar & Medieval Latin as well as from Greek and Hebrew, sometimes re-purposed with meanings specific to Christianity (and sometimes just the Church of Rome).

The idea of the difference is best remembered in the example of the Vulgate Bible, the Latin translation of the Bible from Hebrew and Greek made by Saint Jerome (circa 345-420), the details of his interpretations (which tended to favor the role of the institutional church rather than the personal relationship between Christ and individual Christian) for centuries the source of squabble schism.  Vulgate was from the Latin vulgāta, feminine singular of vulgātus (broadcast, published, having been made known among the people; made common; prostituted, having been made common), perfect passive participle of vulgō (broadcast, make known).  When after the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II; 1962-1965), it was decided to permit the celebration of the mass in local languages rather than ecclesiastical Latin, such use was said to be “in the vernacular”.

Under the Raj: three marquises, three viceroys; Lords Lytton (left), Rippon (centre) and Lansdowne (right).  Upon leaving office, UK prime-ministers were usually granted an earldom but viceroys of India were created Marquises, a notch higher in the peerage.

Under the Raj, there were many vernacular languages; indeed, never did the colonial administrators determine just how many existed, all the fascinated dons giving up after counting hundreds and finding yet more existed.  One difficulty this did present was that it was hard to monitor (and if need be censor) all the criticism which might appear in non-English language publications and, because at the core of the British Empire was racism, violence and rapacious theft of other peoples’ lands and wealth, criticism was not uncommon.  In an attempt to suppress these undercurrents of dissatisfaction, the viceroy (Lord Lytton, 1831–1891; Viceroy of India 1876-1880) imposed the Vernacular Press Act (1878), modelled on earlier Irish legislation, the origins of the word in the Latin verna (a slave born in the master's household) not lost on Western-educated Indians.  Not content with mere suppression, Lord Lytton also created an operation to feed to the press what he wanted printed, using bribery where required.  Fake news was soon a part of these feeds and some historians have suggested the act probably stimulated more resentment than it contained.  In 1881, Lytton’s successor (Lord Rippon, 1827–1909; Viceroy of India 1880-1884) withdrew the act but the damage was done.  The legislative reforms of the viceroys of India varied in intent and consequence.  Lord Lansdowne (1845–1927; Viceroy of India 1888-1894) enacted the Age of Consent Act (1891), raising the age of consent for sexual intercourse for girls (married or unmarried), from ten to twelve, any violation an offence of statutory rape.  Those who like to defend what they claim was the civilizing mission of empire sometimes like to cite this but seem never to dwell on the marriage age for girls in England being twelve as late as 1929.

Macaronic

Macaronic (pronounced mak-uh-ron-ik)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vulgar

Vulgar (pronounced vuhl-ger)

(1) Characterized by ignorance of or lack of good breeding or taste.

(2) Indecent; obscene; lewd, ribald.

(3) Crude, coarse; unrefined, boorish, rude.

(4) As, the vulgar masses, of, relating to, or constituting the ordinary people in a society (mostly archaic).

(5) Current; popular; common; crude; coarse; unrefined.

(6) As the vulgar tongue, spoken by, or being in the language spoken by, the people generally; the vernacular; colloquial speech (mostly archaic).

(7) Lacking in distinction, aesthetic value, or charm; banal; ordinary.

(8) Denoting a form of a language (applied most often to Latin), current among common people, used especially at a period when the formal language is has become archaic and no longer general spoken use (often with initial capital; usually pre-nominal).

(9) In mathematics, a representation of a fractional number based on ordinary or everyday arithmetic as opposed to decimal fractions.  It refers to one in which two whole numbers (the numerator and denominator) are placed above and below a horizontal line (neither can be zero).  Vulgar fractions are also described as common or simple fractions.  Now rare, in US English, the term vulgar faction is obsolete.

1350-1400: From the early Modern English vulgare, from the vulgāris (belonging to the multitude), from volgus & vulgus (mob; common folk), from the Sanskrit vargah (division, group), from the primitive Indo-European wl̥k.  The construct of vulgāris was vulg(us) + -āris (the suffix a form of -ālis, used to form an adjective, usually from a noun, indicating a relationship or a pertaining to).  As an example of the forks of the root, related European words included the Welsh gwala (plenty, sufficiency), the Ancient Greek ἁλία (halía) (assembly), eilein (to press, throng) & εἰλέω (eiléō) (to compress) and the Old Church Slavonic великъ (velikŭ) (great).  The meaning coarse, low, ill-bred was first recorded in the 1640s, probably from earlier use meaning people belonging to the ordinary class dating from the 1530s.  The derived negative forms such as unvulgar and unvulgarly do exist but are rare to the point of being probably obsolete.  When used in disapprobation, the synonyms include boorish, naughty, tawdry, profane, tasteless, ribald, off-color, disgusting, obscene, impolite, suggestive, indecent, crude, scatological, nasty, filthy & coarse.  As applied to linguists, they include conversational, colloquial, vernacular & folk.  In mathematics, they are common (and most frequently), simple.

Vulgar Latin

Vulgar Latin or Sermo Vulgaris (common speech) is a generic term for the non-standard (as opposed to classical) sociolects of Latin from which the Romance languages developed.  It’s said the works written in Latin during classical times almost always used Classical rather than Vulgar Latin and while that is certainly true of what has survived, the literal volume of ephemeral material written in the vernacular is unknown.  Vulgar Latin was used by inhabitants of the Roman Empire and subsequently became a technical term from Latin and Romance-language philology referring to the unwritten varieties of a Latinised language spoken mainly by Italo-Celtic populations governed by the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire.  Traces appear in some inscriptions, such as graffiti or advertisements but almost certainly the educated population mainly responsible for Classical Latin would also have spoken Vulgar Latin in certain contexts irrespective of their socio-economic background.  In that, things were probably little different then than now, educated people using at least some of the phraseology of the less well-spoken, even if only ironically.

Campaign buttons used in the 1964 US presidential campaign: Republican Party  (left) and Democrat Party (right).  It wouldn't be for many decades that the red would be standardized as the color of the Republicans and blue for the Democrats (as the result of a somewhat random allocation of colors by the television networks when illustrating results with charts and other graphics.

It shouldn’t be confused with "barracks Latin" (originally a casual description of the "rough" language of soldiers and others compared with "polite, educated Latin" of the Roman elite) which is the rendering, with humorous intent, of common English phrases into something which sounds as though it might be Latin.  One of the Monty Python films used the barracks Latin names Sillius Soddus and Biggus Dickus and the best known is Illegitimi non carborundum, an aphorism translating as "don't let the bastards grind you down".  First recorded among soldiers during World War II (1939-1945), an association from which it gained the "barracks" label (although it's not clear in which branch of the military it originated nor even if the coiners were British or American).  It caught on and was famously popularized by Republican candidate Barry Goldwater (1909-1998) during his disastrous 1964 presidential campaign.  Despite the Kennedy assassination, those who voted (and there were many who were prevented from exercising that constitutional right) in the 1964 election represented the United States in the era during which prosperity and optimism were were more widely distributed than at any point in its history.  Vietnam, Watergate, malaise and trickle-down economics would follow.  In the 1964 election, Goldwater lost to President Lyndon Johnson (LBJ, 1908–1973; US President 1963-1969) in one of the biggest landslides in US electoral history.  It was also one of the more polarized campaigns and the electorate responded better to Johnson's "building a great society" than Goldwater's "fear and loathing" although such were the atmospherics that it's now remembered more as "crooked old Lyndon vs crazy old Barry".  

Goldwater hung in his office a sign reminding him of his dictum although his used an embellished barracks Latin: Noli permittere Illegitimatis carborundum (Never let the bastards grind you down).  He always denied being a Freemason and admitted membership only of a fraternal organization known as the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks.

Although an avowed conservative (with at least some of what that implies), he wasn't above using vulgar English if he thought there was a point to be made.  When told Johnson aide Walter Jenkins (1918–1985)  had been arrested in a YMCA (Young Men's Christian Association) toilet in the act of "performing an indecency upon another man", although he declined to use the event to attack the Democrats (some suggesting he had no wish to provoke the Republicans into probing for evidence of homosexuality among his staff), in "off the record" comments to journalists he would complain: "What a way to win an election, communists and cocksuckers".  As it would transpire, others in rge Republican machine didn't share Goldwater's reticence and tried to use the arrest as a smear against the administration but the general public reaction was more amused than outraged.  Jenkins paid a US$50 fine for "disorderly conduct".

In the election, Goldwater did however win five states in the South, the best result by a Republican in the region since the reconstruction-era after the US Civil War (1861-1865), a harbinger of the shift in political alignment which would transform the South from a Democratic stronghold (the so-called “Solid South”) into a bastion of Republican strength.  There were many reasons for this and it may be some of them were probably more significant than Goldwater's uncompromising positions on economics and his staunch anti-communism.  Nevertheless, his mystique among American conservatives remains based on the legend of him being the intellectual trailblazer for the “Regan Revolution” and the transformation of the Republican party from a centrist aggregation of the north-eastern establishment into a collective of regional and sectional pressure groups, the factionalism prone to unleashing the forces of extremism which now contest for control.  After Ronald Reagan’s (1911–2004; US President 1981-1989) victory in 1980, one Washington Post columnist noted the feeling of those who had voted for Goldwater in 1964 being one of vindication, regretting only it had taken “…sixteen years to count the votes".

The vulgar, indecent, obscene, lewd & ribald

Although the technical uses in mathematics and the categorization of Latin strains are long established, the best known and most common use of “vulgar” is to describe things considered indecent, obscene, lewd or ribald.  Given the habits and tastes of men, there’s little shortage of such material thus to be described but shifts in public perception and tolerance means vulgarity is a moving target and there is certainly no consensus, opinions varying not only between but within regions, class, generations and probably just about any segmentation of society yet devised.  The unifying factor though is usually anything involving sex or any conventionally sexualized body parts (such as the foot fetishists free to indulge most aspects of their hobby).  Although in recent decades there’s been something of a retreat, this remains a permissive age as regards what were once considered vulgarities.

Vulgarity remains in the eye of the beholder.

So, something vulgar can sometimes be judged an obscenity and is often lewd or ribald but not of necessity indecent.  The linguistic tussle is because the words “obscene” and “indecent” appear sometimes in legislation and something so defined can even attract criminal sanction whereas anything lewd is subject merely to social disapprobation while ribald carries the connotation of “humorously vulgar”.  Standards shift (and sometimes are nudged along by this force or that) and it is almost always a subjective judgement as Potter Stewart (1915–1985; associate justice of the US Supreme Court 1958-1981) explained in his famous concurring judgement in Jacobellis v Ohio (378 U.S. 184 (1964)): "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within [the shorthand description “hard-core pornography”], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it…

That may have been what prosecuting counsel Mervyn Griffith-Jones (1909-1979) had in mind when in R v Penguin Books Ltd ((1961) Crim LR 176) he asked the jury to consider whether DH Lawrence’s (1885–1930) novel Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928) was too obscene to be read by the British, alleging it “…induced lustful thoughts in the minds of those who read it” and begging them to ponder “Is it a book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?”.  There was a time when an English jury might have allowed themselves to be told by one of their “betters” what they should be permitted to read but those days were done and the jury (more likely to be servants than masters) had decided they would decide which vulgarities they would tolerate.

Hood

Hood (pronounced hood)

(1) A soft or flexible covering for the head and neck, either separate or attached to a cloak, coat and similar garments.

(2) Something resembling or suggestive of such a covering (especially in shape) and used in botany to describe certain petals or sepals.

(3) In North America and other places subject to that linguistic influence, the (usually) hinged, movable part of an automobile body covering the engine (the bonnet in the UK and most of the old British Empire).  Despite geographical spread, the phrase “under the hood” is now close to universal, referring to (1) the engine of an automobile & (2) by extension, the inner workings or technical aspects of anything (a computer’s specifications etc).

(4) In the UK and most of the old British Empire, the roof of a carriage or automobile, able to be lowered or removed (ie on a convertible, cabriolet, roadster, drophead coupé (DHC) et al).  In North America and other places subject to that linguistic influence such things tend variously to be called soft-tops or convertible tops.

(5) A metal cover or canopy for a stove, fitted usually with a ventilation system (a flue or extractor fan).

(6) In falconry, a cover for the entire head of a hawk or other bird, used when not in pursuit of game.

(7) On academic gowns, judicial robes etc, an ornamental ruffle or fold on the back of the shoulders (in ecclesiastical garments, and in cults such as the Freemasons, also used as a mark of one’s place in the hierarchy).

(8) In nautical use, as hooding ends, one of the endmost planks (or, one of the ends of the planks) in a ship’s bottom at bow or stern which fits into the stem and sternpost rabbets.  When fitted into a rabbet, these resemble a hood (covering).

(9) In zoology, a crest or band of color on the head of certain birds and other animals (such as the fold of skin on the head of a cobra, that covers or appears to cover the head or some similar part).

(10) In anatomy (the human hand), over the extensor digitorum, an expansion of the extensor tendon over the metacarpophalangeal joint (the extensor hood (dorsal hood or lateral hood).

(11) In colloquial use in palaeontology, the osseous or cartilaginous marginal extension behind the back of many dinosaurs (also known as the “frill”).

(12) As the suffix –hood, a native English suffix denoting state, condition, character, nature, etc, or a body of persons of a particular character or class, formerly used in the formation of nouns: childhood; likelihood; knighthood; priesthood and of lad appended as required (Twitterhood, Instahood etc, subsets of Twitterverse & Instaverse respectively).

(13) In slang, a clipping of hoodlum.

(14) In slang, a clipping of neighborhood, especially an urban neighborhood inhabited predominantly by African Americans of low socioeconomic status (a part of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and adopted also by LatinX) although use in these communities does now transcend economic status.

(15) To furnish with or fit a hood; to cover with or as if with a hood.

(16) In medieval armor, a range of protective cloakings or coverings

Pre 900: From the Middle English hode, hod, hude, hudde & hoode (hoodes apparently the most common plural), from the Old English hōd, from the Proto-Germanic hōdaz, (related to the Old High German huot (hat), the Middle Dutch hoet and the Latin cassis helmet) and cognate with the Saterland Frisian Houd, the Old Frisian hōde, the West Frisian & Dutch hoed, the Proto-Iranian xawdaH (hat), the German Low German Hood and the German Hut (hat).  The Old English hād was cognate with German –heit and was a special use used to convey qualities such as order, quality, rank (the sense surviving academic, judicial & ecclesiastical garments).  The ultimate source is uncertain but most etymologists seem to support the primitive Indo-European kad & kadh (to cover).  Hood is modified as required (chemical hood, clitoral hood, un-hood, de-hood, fume hood, hood-shy, hood unit, hoodwink, range hood, riding hood etc) and something thought hood-shaped is sometimes described as cuculliform.  Hood is a noun & verb, hooded & hooding are verbs, hoodless hoodesque & hoodlike are adjectives; the noun plural is hoods.

Hooded: Lindsay Lohan in hoodie, JFK Airport, New York City, NYC April 2013. The bag is a Goyard Saint Louis Tote (coated canvas in black).

Hood as clipping of hoodlum (gangster, thug, criminal etc) dates from the late 1920s and would influence the later use of “hoodie” as a slur to refer to those wearing the garment of the same name, the inference being it was worn with nefarious intent (concealing identity, hiding from CCTV etc.  Hood as a clipping of neighborhood (originally especially an urban (inner-city) neighborhood inhabited predominantly by African Americans of low socio-economic status) dates from circa 1965 and became part of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and was adopted also by LatinX) although use in all communities does now transcend economic status.  It was an alternative to ghetto (a word with a very different tradition) and encapsulated both the negative (crime, violence, poverty) & positive (group identity, sense of community) aspects of the low-income inner city experience.  Although a part of AAVE, it never formed part of Ebonics because its meaning was obvious and, to an extent, integrated into general US vernacular English.  The phrase “all good in the hood” is an example of the use of the clipping.

Blu-Ray & DVD package art for Red Riding Hood (2006).  In US use, "alternate" seems to have been accepted as a synonym for "alternative".  Few seem to mind.

The verb hood in the sense of “to put a hood” & “to furnish with a hood” on dates from circa 1400 while although hooded & hooding aren’t attested until decades later, it’s possible the use emerged at much the same time.  The Old English hod was typically "a soft covering for the head" which extended usually over the back of the neck but only in some cases did it (permanently or ad-hoc) attach to some other garment.  The modern spelling emerged early in the fifteenth century and indicated a “long vowel” although that pronunciation is long extinct.  The word was picked up in medicine, botany & zoology in the seventeenth century while the use to describe the “foldable or removable covers on a carriage which protects the occupants from the elements” was documented since 1826 and that was used in a similar context by the manufacturers of prams and baby-carriages by at least 1866.  The meaning “hinged cover for an automobile engine” was in use in the US by 1905 while across the Atlantic, the British stuck to “bonnet”.  The fairy tale (some read it as a cautionary tale) Little Red Riding Hood (1729) was a translation of Charles Perrault's (1628-1703) Petit Chaperon Rouge which appeared in his book Contes du Temps Passé (Stories or Tales from Past Times (1697)).

The suffix -hood (a word-forming element meaning “state or condition of being”) was an evolution of the Old English -had (condition, quality, position) which was used to construct forms such as cildhad (childhood), preosthad (priesthood) & werhad (manhood); it was cognate with German –heit & -keit, the Dutch -heid, the Old Frisian & Old Saxon -hed, all from the Proto-Germanic haidus (manner, quality (literally “bright appearance”, from the primitive Indo-European skai & kai- (bright, shining) which was cognate with the Sanskrit ketu (brightness, appearance).  It was originally a free-standing word but in Modern English survives only in this suffix.

HMS Hood in March 1924.  The last battlecruiser built for the Royal Navy, it was 860 feet (262 metres) in length, displaced 47,000 tons and had a main armament of eight 15 inch (380 mm) guns.

HMS Hood (1918-1941) was a Royal Navy battlecruiser named after Admiral Samuel Hood, first Viscount (1724–1816), one of five admirals the family would provide.  Although the Battle of Jutland (1916) had exposed the inherent limitations of the battlecruiser concept and the particular flaws in the British designs, the building of the Hood anyway continued and the revisions made in the light of the Jutland experience in some way exacerbated the ship’s problems; weight was added without fully affording the additional protection required.  The Admiralty was aware of this and of the four battlecruisers of her class planned, Hood was the only one completed as the Navy embarked on a re-design but the naval disarmament agreed between the major powers in the aftermath of World War I (1914-1918) meant none were built (indeed no navy would launch a new battlecruiser until the 1980s and even then the notion was thought strange) and for almost two decades Hood remained the largest warship in the world.

Naval architecture, fire control ballistics and aviation had however moved on in those years and although the biggest warship afloat (the “Mighty Hood” in the public imagination), Hood was outmoded but as late as the early 1930s this mattered little because the prospect of war between the big powers seemed not only remote but absurd.  Hood is still thought one of the most elegant warships ever and it spent those years touring the empire and other foreign ports, her fine lines and apparent might impressing many although the Admiralty was well aware the days of Pax Britannica were over.  Much comment has been made about the design flaw which resulted in the Hood sinking in minutes after a shell from the German battleship Bismarck, fired from a range of some ten miles (16,000 m), penetrated the deck (some modern analysts contest this because of technical details relating to the angle of fire available to the German gunners), causing the magazine to explode, essentially splitting the hull in two.  In fairness to the Kriegsmarine (the German navy), it was a good shot but at that range, it was also lucky, that essential element in many a battle.

In structural linguistics, the term “Americanisms” is used to describe several sub-sets of innovations in English attributed to those (and their descendents) who settled in North America.  They include (1) spellings (color vs colour), most of which make more sense than the originals, (2) simplification of use (check used for cheque as well as its other meanings), (3) coinings (sockdolager (decisive blow or remark), a nineteenth century American original of contested origin) and (4) alternatives (suspenders vs braces).  Hood was one word where used differed in the US.  In the UK, the hood was the (traditionally leather but latterly a variety of fabrics) folding top which began life on horse-drawn carriages and later migrated to cars which eventually were, inter alia, called cabriolets, drophead coupés or roadsters.  In the US the same coachwork was used but there the folding tops came to be called “soft tops”, one reason being the hood was the (usually) hinged panel which covered the engine.  In the UK, that was called a bonnet (from the Middle English bonet, from the Middle French bonet (which endures as the Modern French bonnet), from the Old French bonet (material from which hats are made), from the Frankish bunni (that which is bound), from the Proto-Germanic bundiją (bundle), from the primitive Indo-European bend- (to tie).  The origins of the use of bonnet and hood as engine coverings were essentially the same: the words were in the nineteenth century both used on both sides of the Atlantic to describe cowls or coverings which protected machinery from the elements, impacts etc (the idea based on the familiar garments) and it was only chance that one use prevailed in one place and one in the other.  There were other differences too: what the British called the boot the Americans said was the trunk which on the early automobiles, like many of the stage coaches they replaced, indeed it was.

Unhinged: Not all hoods were hinged.  In 1969, some Plymouth Road Runners (left) and Dodge Super Bees (right) could be ordered with a lightweight, fibreglass hood held in place by four locking pins.  Known as the "lift-off hood", it need two conveniently to remove the thing so it wasn't the most practical option Detroit ever offered but to the target market, it was very cool.

Atavism

Atavism (pronounced at-uh-viz-uhm)

(1) In biology (most often in zoology & botany), the reappearance in an individual of characteristics of some (typically) remote ancestor which have not manifested in intervening generations.

(2) An individual embodying such a reversion.

(3) Reversion to an earlier or more primitive type (a “throwback” in the vernacular).

(4) In sociology and political science, the recurrence or reversion to a past behavior, method, characteristic or style after a long period of absence, used especially of a reversion to violence.

1825-1830: The construct was the Latin atav(us) (great-great-great grandfather; remote ancestor, forefather” (the construct being at- (akin to atta (familiar name for a father) and used perhaps to suggest “beyond”)  + avus (grandfather, ancestor) + -ism.  The –ism suffix was from the Ancient Greek ισμός (ismós) & -isma noun suffixes, often directly, sometimes through the Latin –ismus & isma (from where English picked up ize) and sometimes through the French –isme or the German –ismus, all ultimately from the Ancient Greek (where it tended more specifically to express a finished act or thing done).  It appeared in loanwords from Greek, where it was used to form abstract nouns of action, state, condition or doctrine from verbs and on this model, was used as a productive suffix in the formation of nouns denoting action or practice, state or condition, principles, doctrines, a usage or characteristic, devotion or adherence (criticism; barbarism; Darwinism; despotism; plagiarism; realism; witticism etc).  Atavism & atavist are nouns, atavic, atavistic & atavistical are adjectives and atavistically is an adverb; the noun plural is atavisms.

The primitive Indo-European awo meant “adult male relative other than the father”, the most obvious descendent the modern “uncle”.  The English form was influenced by the French atavisme (the coining attributed usually to the botanist Antoine Nicolas Duchesne (1747-1827 Paris) and was first used in biology in the sense of “reversion by influence of heredity to ancestral characteristics, resemblance of a given organism to some remote ancestor, return to an early or original type”.  The adjective atavistic (pertaining to atavism) appeared in 1847, joined three year later by the now rare atavic (pertaining to a remote ancestor, exhibiting atavism).  Atavism (and its related forms) are none of those words which can be used as a neutral descriptor (notably in botany) or to denote something positive or negative.  Although the core meaning is always some “past or ancestral characteristic”, it tends to be pejorative if use of people or human cultures reverting to some “primitive characteristics” (especially if they be war or other forms of violence.  In the vernacular, the earthier “throwback” has been more common than the rather formal “atavistic” although the circumlocution “skip a generation” is often used for traits that occur after a generation of absence and “throwback” anyway became a “loaded” term because of its association with race (in the sense of skin-color).

Medicine has constructed its own jargon associated with the phenomenon in which an inherited condition appears to “skip a generation”: it’s described often as “autosomal recessive inheritance” or “incomplete penetrance”.  While the phrase “skipping a generation” is not uncommon in informal use, the actual mechanisms depend on the genetic inheritance pattern of the condition.  Autosomal Recessive Inheritance is defined as a “condition is caused by mutations in both copies of a specific gene” (one inherited from each parent).  This can manifest as an individual inheriting only one mutated copy (which means they will be a carrier but will remain asymptomatic) but if two carriers have issue, there is (1) a 25% chance the offspring will inherit both mutated copies and express the condition, (2) a 50% chance the offspring will be a carrier and (3) a 25% chance the offspring will inherit no mutations.  Thus, the condition may appear (and for practical purposes does) skip a generation in those cases where no symptoms exist; the classic examples include sickle cell anemia and cystic fibrosis.  Incomplete Penetrance occurs when an individual inherits a gene mutation which creates in them a genetic predisposition to a condition but symptoms do not develop because of environmental factors, other genetic influences or “mere chance” (and in the matter of diseases like those classified as “cancer”, the influence of what might be called “bad luck” is still probably underestimated, and certainly not yet statistically measured.  In such cases, the mutation may be passed to the next generation, where it might manifest, giving the appearance of skipping a generation and the BRCA1 & BRCA2 mutations for (hereditary) breast cancer are well-known examples.

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

In political science, “atavism” is used to refer to a reversion to older, more “primitive” means of furthering political ends.  Although it’s most associated with a critique of violence, political systems, ideologies, behaviors or economic policies have all be described as “atavistic” and their manifestation is linked often with ideas presented as representing (and implicitly offering a return to) a perceived “golden age”, a past structure which is idealized; it appear often as a reaction to change, notably modernity, globalization, or what is claimed to be a “decline in values”.  Political scientists identify stands in nominally non-violent atavism including: (1) Nostalgic Nationalism.  Nationalist movements are almost always race-based (in the sense of longing for a return to a “pure” ethnicity in which a population is “untainted” by ethnic diversity.  It’s usually a romanticization of a nation's past (historically, “purity” was less common than some like to believe) offering the hope of a return to traditional values, cultural practices, or forms of governance.  (2) Tribalism and Identity Politics. A call to primordial loyalties (such as ethnic or tribal identities), over modern, pluralistic, or institutional frameworks has been a feature of recent decades and was the trigger for the wars in the Balkans during the 1990s, the conflict which introduced to the language the euphemism “ethnic cleansing”, a very atavistic concept.  Tribalism and identity politics depends on group identities & allegiance overshadowing any broader civic or national unity on the basis of overturning an artificial (and often imposed) structure and returning to a pre-modern arrangement. (3) Anti-modernism or Anti-globalization. These are political threads which sound “recent” but both have roots which stretch back at least to the nineteenth century and Pius IX’s (1792–1878; pope 1846-1878) Syllabus Errorum (Syllabus of Errors, 1864) was one famous list of objections to change.  The strategy behind such atavism may be identifiably constant but tactics can vary and there’s often a surprising degree of overlap in the messaging of populists from the notional right & left which is hardly surprising given that in the last ten years both Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021; president elect 2024) and Bernie Sanders (b 1941; senior US senator (Independent, Vermont) since 2007) honed their messaging to appeal to the same disgruntled mass.

Elizabeth Boody Schumpeter (1898-1953, left) & Joseph Schumpeter (1883–1950, right).  It was his third marriage.

Austrian political economist Joseph Schumpeter used the word “atavism” in his analysis of the dynamics which contributed to the outbreak of World War I (1914-1918), something he attributed to the old, autocratic regimes of Central and Eastern Europe “dragging the modern, liberal West” back in time.  Schumpeter believed that if commercial ties created interdependence between nations then armed conflict would become unthinkable and US author Thomas Friedman (b 1953) in The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization (1999) suggested the atavistic tendency of man to go to war could be overcome by modern commerce making connectivity between economies so essential to the well-being of citizens that no longer would they permit war because such a thing would be so dangerous for the economy; it was an attractive argument because we have long since ceased to be citizens and are merely economic units.  Friedman’s theory didn’t actually depend on his earlier phrase which suggested: “…countries with McDonalds outlets don’t go to war with each other” but that was how readers treated it.  Technically, it was a bit of a gray area (Friedman treated the earlier US invasion of Panama (1989) as a police action) but the thesis was anyway soon disproved in the Balkans.  Now, Schumpeter and Friedman seem to be cited most often in pieces disproving their theses and atavism remains alive and kicking.