Protagonist

Protagonist (pronounced proh-tag-uh-nist)

(1) The leading character or hero of a performance or literary work.

(2) A proponent for or a political or other cause (from an incorrect construction but now widely used).

(3) The leader or principal advocate of a political or other cause.

(4) The first actor in ancient Greek drama, who played not only the main role, but also other roles when the main character was off-stage and was thus first amongst deuteragonists and tritagonists.

1671: From the Ancient Greek πρωταγωνιστής (prōtagōnistḗs) (actor who plays the first part; principal character in a story, drama), the literal translation being “first combatant” and according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the word first appeared in English in 1671 in the writings of the English poet, literary critic, translator and playwright John Dryden (1631–1700).  The construct was πρῶτος (prôtos) (first) + ἀγωνιστής (agōnistḗs) (one who contends for a prize; a combatant; an actor), from the primitive Indo-European root per (forward (hence "in front of, first, chief")) + agōnistēs (actor, competitor), from agōn (contest), from the primitive Indo-European root ag- (to drive, draw out or forth, move).  The link between the two is the notion of one who contends for some prize in a contest (agōn).  The general meaning "leading person in any cause or contest" is from 1889. The mistaken sense of "advocate, supporter" (1935) is from misunderstanding of the Greek prōt- meaning the same as the Latin pro- (for; in favor of) (thus the comparison with antagonist).  The Deuteragonist "second person or actor in a drama", is attested from 1840.  The general meaning "leading person in any cause or contest" seems first to have been used only as late as 1889.  Linguistic sloppiness saw some, by 1935, add the sense of "advocate or supporter", probably from a misreading of the Greek prōt & prōtos, either equating or confusing it with the Latin pro (for).  More than tolerated, it seems in English to have become a standard meaning and is often used in sub-electoral politics.  The relatively rare silver medallist, the deuteragonist (second person or actor in a drama), is attested from 1840.

The protagonist’s opponent is the antagonist (from the Ancient Greek ἀνταγωνιστής (antagōnistḗs) (opponent)) and in classical Greek drama, the protagonist was the hero, the antagonist the villain.  A protagonist was central to the plot, although, there could be sub-plots, each narrative with its own protagonist.  There were plays with two protagonists tangled in one plot, but that happened where the first had died, the second then assuming the role.  Some playwrights would introduce false protagonists, soon to vanish.  Modern material (as opposed to the modernist), does not always adhere to the classical Greek form.  For content-providers, especially on screens, having multiple protagonists within the one plot is far from unusual.

In his highly recommended book The Surgeon of Crowthorne (1998), historian Simon Winchester (b 1944) noted the dispute between two of the great authorities in the matter of the English language: the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and Henry Watson Fowler (1858–1933), author of A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926).  The OED quoted Dryden’s passage from 1671 (the first known instance in English of “protagonist”) in which the poet used the word in the plural whereas, as Henry Fowler well knew, in any Greek drama there could only ever be one protagonist.  It had of course always been possible for a critic to write about protagonists if comparing two or more productions but that was a function of syntax, not meaning.  Henry Fowler disapproved of much which was modern and in the matter of a play with two protagonists, he rules not only was that wrong but also “absurd” because, a protagonist being the most important figure in the text, there couldn’t be two: “One is either the most important person or one is not”.  So Fowler’s entry of 1926 and the OED’s of two years later stood for decades as contrary judgements, factions in support of one or the other presumably forms from the handful of earnest souls on the planet who care about such things.  When Sir Ernest Gowers (1880–1966) revised A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (the second edition published in 1965), he retained Fowler’s original condemnatory paragraphs but added a coda, noting the original sense from Antiquity but acknowledging that in a dynamic, living language like English, meanings can shift and words can be re-appropriated, adding that in the case of “protagonist”, it seemed “The temptation to regard protagonist as the antonym of antagonist seems irresistible…”  In 1981 when the OED published one of their supplements, it was made clear Fowler was correct if the word is used in the context of Greek theatre (for which it was coined) but that English had moved on and there had for at least centuries been works of fiction with two or more characters of equal importance and it was both convenient and well understood by all when they were so labelled.            

Lindsay Lohan, vampiric protagonist

Directed by Tiago Mesquita with a screenplay by Mark Morgan, Among the Shadows is a thriller which straddles the genres, elements of horror and the supernatural spliced in as required.  Although in production since 2015, with the shooting in London and Rome not completed until the next year, it wasn’t until 2018 when, at the European Film Market, held in conjunction with the Berlin International Film Festival, that Tombstone Distribution listed it, the distribution rights acquired by VMI, Momentum and Entertainment One, and VMI Worldwide.  In 2019, it was released progressively on DVD and video on demand (VOD), firstly in European markets, the UK release delayed until mid-2020.  In some markets, for reasons unknown, it was released with the title The Shadow Within.

It was Lindsay Lohan’s first film since The Canyons (2013).  In Among the Shadows, she plays a character married to an EU politician, a hint it’s somewhere on the horror continuum, the twist being she’s also a vampire.  Which makes sense.  When you think about it.  What unfolds is a murky mix of political intrigue and mass-murder in which the vampire and a woman with her own secrets are thrown together as protagonists struggling to stop the politician being horribly slaughtered by a pack of werewolves.

That may have been the flaw in the plot.  A film in which most of the members of the European Council, European Commission and (perhaps especially) the European Parliament are murdered by werewolves, preferably in the bloodiest ways imaginable, would probably have been a blockbuster.  Even without social distancing, from Bristol to Berlin, the queues outside cinemas would likely have stretched for blocks.  As it was, without the bodies of eurocrats piled high, critical and commercial reaction was muted, some interesting technical points raised about the editing and even the sequence of filming.  Still, it’s Lohan-noir, Lindsay as a vampire, gruesome killings, werewolves and a Scottish detective, just the movie for a first date during a pandemic.  There is a trailer.

Ficelle

Ficelle (pronounced fis-elle or fis-elle-ah (French))

(1) A variant of baguette (a type of French bread), similar in composition and appearance except much thinner.

(2) String or twine (in French), used literally & figuratively.

(3) In literary theory, a confidant (a confidante if a female), whose role within the text is to elicit information, conveyed to the reader without narratorial intervention

1880s: From the French ficelle (string; twine), from the Old French ficel, & ficelle (small cord; thread), probably from the Vulgar Latin filicella, from fibrilla, a diminutive form of fibra (fiber; filament) from fīlum (thread).  The French phrase ficelles du metier (tricks of the trade) appears of the in the form apprendre les ficelles du metier which translates best as “to learn the ropes”.  The French verb ficeler translates as “to tie up, to truss”.  In French, as well as the literal meanings (of string and certain breads), ficelle also has figurative uses.  It can be used to refer to a subtle trick or stratagem but it’s most popular as an allusion to “string pulling”, suggesting “behind the scenes” manipulation or “back channel” deals.  In English, it evolved to enjoy two niches: (1) in literary theory and (2) in culinary and artisanal bakery use.  Ficelle is a noun & verb; the noun plural is ficelles.

In literary theory, a ficelle is the confidant character whose role within the text is to elicit information, conveyed to the reader without narratorial intervention.  The term was introduced by the author Henry James (1843–1916) who used the word in the sense it appeared in French théâtre de marionnettes (marionette theatre) to refer to the strings with which the puppeteer manipulated their puppets.  What James wanted was a word to inhabit the literary grey area between the confidant and the narrator, his idea being the character in a novel who is presented as the friend of another but whose purpose as a literary device was to be the “friend of the reader”, imparting vital information without the disruptive intervention of a narrator.

Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan (b 1986)) & Karen Smith (Amanda Seyfried (b 1985)) in Mean Girls (2004),  Cady Heron was an unusual ficelle in that as the protagonist, she was also a confidante and narrator.

The society masseuse Mrs Heaney in the tragi-comedy of manners The Custom of the Country (1913) by US novelist & interior decorator Edith Wharton (1862–1937) was a ficelle.  Acting as a kind of mentor and even a surrogate mother to Ms Spragg, she uses her keen (but remote) observation of New York’s high society to live a kind of vicarious existence in those circles through the young protagonist, but Wharton’s literary purpose was to use her to flesh out the text with facts helpful to the reader’s understanding.  The classic ficelle however was James's own Maisie Farange in What Maisie Knew (1897) the naive but preternaturally wise child in whom the warring parents, step-parents and lovers casually confide, and through whose eyes the story is told.  There can be overlap in the literary roles of confidant, narrator and ficelle (Lindsay Lohan’s Cady Heron in Mean Girls (2004) has elements of all three) but according to literary theory (1) a ficelle usually is a confidant but must not be a narrator, (2) a confidant can be a narrator if not a ficelle.  In the literary tradition Cady Heron was an untypical protagonist in that most confidants have only a marginal role in the plot, their main function to listen to the intimate feelings and intentions of the protagonist; someone like Horatio in William Shakespeare’s (1564–1616) Hamlet (circa 1600) or the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s (1859–1930) Dr Watson who was the “sounding board” for Sherlock Holmes.

They heard, and were abash'd, and up they sprung (Book 1, line 331).  Illustration by French printmaker & illustrator Gustave Doré (1832–1883) from an 1866 edition of John Milton's (1608-1674) Paradise Lost (1667) edited by US journalist & historian Henry Walsh (1863–1927).

The narrator has a longer tradition and was one of the features of Greek theatre and both Plato (circa 427-348 BC) and Aristotle (384-322 BC) defined three types: (1) the speaker or poet (or any kind of writer) who uses his own voice, (2) one who assumes the voice of another person or persons, speaking in a voice not his own and (3) one who uses a mixture of his own voice and that of others.  In both drama and fiction there are countless examples of each technique but authors could combine the modes, all three appearing in John Milton’s Paradise Lost: Milton begins in his own voice in the first person to invoke the “Heavenly Muse” but later the impression is created that the Muse (ie the Holy Ghost or Holy Spirit) responds to Milton's formal invocation, thus beginning the main narrative.  When first Satan speaks, the third voice is introduced and it’s not until Book III Milton returns to his “own voice” although of course, as the author, all is Milton’s own.  TS Eliot (1888–1965) in his essay The Three Voices of Poetry (1954) interpreted the notion as it could be mapped onto modern verse: “The first voice is the voice of the poet talking to himself - or to nobody.  The second is the voice of the poet addressing an audience, whether large or small.  The third is the voice of the poet when he attempts to create a dramatic character speaking in verse when he is saying not what he would say in his own person, but only what he can say within the limits of one imaginary character addressing another imaginary character.”

La baguette et la ficelle. A ficelle (bottom) is more slender than a baguette (top) although in many parts of the English-speaking world the term "French stick" is used generically.  Some of what's sold as "French sticks" must appal French bakers.

Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970; President of France 1959-1969) in 1962 famously observed of his nation: “How can you govern a country which has two hundred and forty-six varieties of cheese?” and he’d probably be amused to learn that by 2024 some 1,600 distinct types had been identified.  There aren’t quite than many types of baguette but there are still a few including the “artisan baguette”, “moulded baguette”, “floured baguette”, “chocolate baguette”, “multicereal baguette”, “whole wheat baguette, “baguette a l’ancienne” (old-fashioned), “Viennoise baguette”, “Sourdough baguette”, “Baguette de Seigle”, “Baguette en épis” (corn baguette) and the “ficelle”.  The difference between the classic baguette of the popular imagination is essentially the size and shape.  A typical baguette is 610-710 mm (24-26 inches) in length with a slender, elongated shape, the crust crispy crust and the centre airy.  The ficelle is both narrower and shorter (usually around 300-400 mm (12-16 inches) long and renowned for its chewier texture and slightly thinner crust, characteristics which make it less versatile than a baguette but they are popular for making gourmet rolls or as an alternative to crackers when serving dips or spreads.  Something like the ficelle may genuinely have been the original form of the modern baguette but the name was adopted only late in the nineteenth century to distinguish them from the larger creations which had become popular; it was an allusion to a “piece of string”, the diminutive ficelle long and narrow by comparison with what had become the “standard” baguette.

Beware of imitations: The baguette de tradition française.

The origin of the baguette (as it's now understood) is truly a mystery and there are so many tales that it's recommended people choose to believe which ever most appeals to the.  In France, a true baguette (Baguette artisanale) is made from ingredients and with a method defined in law while the famous shape is a convention.  Typically, baguettes have a diameter between 50-75 mm (2-3 inches) and are some 610-710 mm (24-26 inches) in length although the 1 m (39 inch) baguette is not unusual, popular especially with the catering trade.  It’s a little misleading to suggest the baguette was invented because for centuries loaves in the shape existed in many places around the world and recipes for the mixing of dough were constantly subject to changes imposed by the success of harvests, economics, supply-chain disruptions and simple experimentation.  The baguette instead evolved and its popularity was a thing of natural selection; it survived because people preferred the taste, texture and convenience of form while other breads faded from use.  It seems clear that the long, stick-like direct ancestors of the baguette began to assume their recognizably modern form in French towns and cities in the eighteenth century although doubtless there was much variation between regions and probably even between bakers in the same place.  The daily bread being the classic market economy, bakers would be influenced by losing sales to a more popular shop and so would adjust their mixes or techniques to attract customers back.  In this way a standardized form would have emerged and, in the French way, by 1920 the assembly had passed a law codifying the critical parameters (weight, size and price), formalizing the popular name baguette.  In 2003, the jocular slang "freedom bread" emerged to describe the baguette, an allusion to the "Freedom Fries" which replaced "French Fries" in US government staff canteens while there was tension between the White House and the Élysée Palace over France's attitude to the proposed invasion of Iraq.   

Lindsay Lohan in promotion for @lilybakerjewels, 2020.  The Rainbow Baguette Ring (centre) using stones cut in a true “baguette” rectangle whereas the Rainbow Bracelet used squares.

Globalization and modern techniques of mass production however intruded on many aspects of French lives and bakeries weren’t immune from the challenge of the cheap “baguette” sold by supermarkets.  Even among the boulangerie (a French bakery in which the bread must, by law, be baked on-premises) there were some who resorted to less demanding methods of production to compete.  As a matter of cultural protection, the assembly in 1993 enacted Le Décret Pain (The Bread Decree) which stipulates that to be described as pain maison (homemade bread), a bread needs to be wholly kneaded, shaped, and baked at the place of sale.  To limit the scope of the supermarkets (some of which were importing frozen, pre-prepared dough), rules also defined what pain traditionnel français (traditional French bread) may be made from and banning any pre-made components from baguettes.  Also retained was the relevant provision of the 1920 labor legislation which prohibits the employment of people in bread and pastry making between ten in the evening and four in the morning.  So, when visiting a boulangerie, it’s recommended to ask for a baguette de tradition française (usually as baguette de tradition) which is made from wheat flour, water, yeast, and common salt (reflecting modern practice, one may contain up to 0.5% soya flour, up to 2% broad bean flour and up to 0.3% wheat malt flour) and the dough must rest between 15-20 hours at a temperature between 4-6^o C (43-46^o F).  The less exalted baguettes ordinaires, are made with baker's yeast and a less exacting specification.

The French Ministère de la Culture’s (Ministry of Culture) L'inventaire national du Patrimoine culturel immatériel (National Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage) in 2018 added the baguette to its index and in 2022, the artisanal know-how and culture of the baguette was added to UNESCO’s (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) list of Intangible Cultural Heritage.  Already preserving the information about some 600 traditions from more than 130 countries, UNESCO noted the addition by saying it celebrated the French way of life, something of which the baguette, as a central part of the French diet for at least 100 years, was emblematic.  With some 16 million consumed in France every day, the “…the baguette is a daily ritual, a structuring element of the meal, synonymous with sharing and conviviality", a statement from UNESCO read, concluding it was “…important that these skills and social habits continue to exist in the future."

Act

Act (pronounced akt)

(1) Anything done, being done, or to be done; deed; performance.

(2) The process of doing.

(3) A formal decision, law, or the like, by a legislature, ruler, court, or other authority; decree or edict; statute; judgment, resolve, or award (with initial capital when part of a name).  An act is created by a legislature passing a bill.

(4) An instrument or document stating something done or transacted.

(5) One of the main divisions of a play or opera.

(6) A short performance by one or more entertainers, usually part of a variety show or radio or television program or the personnel of such a group.

(7) A false show; pretense; feint.

(8) In scholasticism (a medieval school of philosophy), (1) activity in process; operation, (2) the principle or power of operation, (3) form as determining essence & (4) a state of realization, as opposed to potentiality (an occurrence effected by the volition of a human agent, usually opposed at least as regards its explanation to one which is causally determined).

(9) To do something; exert energy or force; be employed or operative.

(10) To reach, make, or issue a decision on some matter.

(11) To operate or function in a particular way; perform specific duties or functions.

(12) To produce an effect; perform a function; to behave or conduct oneself in a particular fashion.

(13) To pretend; feign.

(14) to represent (a fictitious or historical character) with one's person; to perform as an actor.

(15) To serve or substitute (usually followed by for).

(16) To actuate, to move to action; to actuate; to animate (obsolete).

(17) As ACT, the initialization for Australian Capital Territory, a federal territory created for the establishment of Canberra as Australia’s capital city.

(18) In certain English universities, a thesis maintained publicly by a candidate for a degree, or to show the proficiency of a student.

(19) In mathematics, construed with on or upon, of a group; to map via a homomorphism to a group of automorphisms.

(20) In Scottish law, to enact, decree (obsolete).

1350–1400: From the Middle English act & acte, from the Old French acte, from the Latin ācta (register of events), plural of āctum (decree, law (later “something done”)), noun use of the past participle of agere (to set in motion, drive, drive forward", hence "to do, perform" and figuratively "incite to action; keep in movement, stir up" a verb with a broad range of meaning in Latin, including "act on stage, play the part of; plead a cause at law; chase; carry off, steal”), the construct being āg- (past participle stem) + -tum (the neuter past participle suffix) and directly from the Latin āctus (a doing; a driving, impulse, a setting in motion; a part in a play), the construct being āg- + -tus (the suffix of verbal action); the ultimate source was the primitive Indo-European héǵeti. The word partially displaced deed (which endured also to enjoy a specific meaning in law), from the Old English dǣd (act, deed).  Source of it all was the primitive Indo-European root ag- (to drive, draw out or forth, move).  The present participle is acting, the past participle acted.

The theatrical (part of a play (from the 1510s)) and the early fifteenth century legislative senses of the word existed also in Latin although the idea of "one of a series of performances in a variety show" seems not to have been in use until the 1890s although such forms of entertainment were by then long-established.  The (usually disparaging) use to suggest a "display of exaggerated behavior" is from 1928, extended from the theatrical sense.  The "act of God” (a natural force or event uncontrollable by man) was first recorded in 1726 as a legal term to refer to matters in which plaintiffs could not sue for compensation or relief because the consequent losses could not by anyone have been “…guarded against by the ordinary exertions of human skill and prudence so as to prevent its effect.”  Even Adolf Hitler (who wasn't fond of of churches and priests (the Roman Catholic ones he called "black crows") found it often convenient to invoke the name of the Almighty) found the concept helpful, describing the destruction of the Hindenburg dirigible in 1937 as “an act of God”.  The word had been in the language of law for a while, an act in the 1590s understood as something "in the process" and legal scholars link this with the late sixteenth century use of act as a euphemism for "sexual intercourse”.

The verb was a mid fifteenth century development from the noun and most of the modern senses in English probably are from the noun.  In the mid 1400s, it began with the sense of "to act upon or adjudicate in legal matters” before from circa 1600 coming to be used in the familiar general meaning of "to do, perform, transact", extended to things in the sense of "do something, exert energy or force”, by 1751, a use which would become increasingly common in physics and cosmology.  In theatrical performances, from the 1590s it meant to "perform as an actor" (intransitive) and by the 1610s "represent by performance on the stage" (transitive). The meaning "perform specific duties or functions," often on a temporary basis, had come into use by 1804 and was given a new legitimacy when the Duke of Wellington (1769–1852; UK prime-minister 1828-1830) was described as “acting prime-minister” between November-December 1834 while awaiting the return from Italy of the king’s appointee.  One verb form which in general use didn’t survive was co-act ("to act together in a performance), noted from circa 1600 and which begat co-action; co-active; co-actor etc although co-act (and variations) is still sometimes used in scientific papers.

To “act on” in the sense of "to exert influence upon" entered general use in the 1810s, the adoption encouraged by the increasing appearance of the phrase in scientific literature.  To “act up” came by 1900 mean "be unruly" (in reference to a horse in the same way bolter (ie “to bolt” in the sense of “gallop off without warning”)) was used, a reversal of the earlier meaning "acting in accordance with a duty, expectation, or belief” which dates from 1645.  To “act out” (behave anti-socially) was part of the jargon of psychiatry noted first in 1974; it meant "expressing one's unconscious impulses or desires", following “acting out” (abnormal behavior caused by unconscious influences) from 1945.

The idiomatic forms are legion.  “To get into the act” (participate) dates from 1947 and “to get (one's) act together” (organize one's chaotic life) is said not to have been used until the mid-1970s which seems surprising but more than one source records this.  The idea of the “one-act” was borrowed from the literal “one act play” (a performance consisting of a single act), noted since 1888, the figurative use suggesting either brevity or inadequacy depending on context.  The verb overact (to go too far in action) faded from use except in its original sense from the theatre where it described an actor “playing a part with too much emphasis; an extravagant and unnatural manner”.  The theatrical slang encapsulating this was “chewing the scenery", which sounds modern but dates from the 1630s.  To “act one’s age” is to behave in a manner befitting the maturity one is presumed to have attained at a certain stage in life.  An “act of faith” is to embark on a course of action on either (1) a basis of trust rather than any guarantee or (2) as a demonstration one's religious faith.

Acts & Scenes

William Shakespeare agitprop.

The act is a major division in many performance pieces such as plays, film, opera etc and frequently (though not of necessity) consists of a number of scenes, the concept dating from the theatre of antiquity.  Traditionally, the division of a work into acts and scenes was undertaken by the author but such delineations, especially of older material, can be made by critics or those applying academic analysis and where the notion of authorship can become blurred (such as a film director interpreting a text), there can be variations from the original, something sometimes controversial.  The application of the concept (and the labels) of acts and scenes is widely applied to many forms of entertainment, sometimes to provide a structural framework and sometimes, one suspects, to lend a not always deserved gravitas.  In the production of more recent material, commercial imperatives can also dictate the divisions, the single intermission a common occurrence which renders a performance inherently a two-stage event in some sense.

The five-act structure.

The number of acts in a piece need not bear any relationship to its length although this certainly is the general tendency, a one act play usually a deliberately short work.  Although the five act structure had until the early nineteenth century been most frequently used by playwrights, many analysts suggest this was a kind of formalism, a deferential (and perhaps devotional) nod to William Shakespeare (circa 1564–1616) who usually adhered to the five act model in his plays.  The bard had his reasons and there is a discernible rhythm as his five acts evolve but none the less, even in the most intricate of his plays, it’s possible convincingly to map onto them the now conventional three act structure.

The three act structure.

The three-act structure can simply and unexceptionally be understood as the beginning, the middle and the end.  It is in act one that the nature of the conflict is established and the identities of the protagonist and antagonist are revealed (or in the case of the latter, at least alluded to.  During the second act, difficulties will arise, these the dramatic device which seem to create the insurmountable obstacle which much defeat the protagonist.  In the third act, there will be a climax (and perhaps anti-climaxes), the point at which all seems finally lost for the protagonist.  However, despite it all, the protagonist prevails and, even if they die, the circumstances will be such that resolution attained is sufficient to satisfy the moral point to be made.

F Scott Fitzgerald with wife Zelda (Zelda Sayre, 1900-1948).

F Scott Fitzgerald’s (1896–1940) oft-quoted phrase “there are no second acts in American lives” appears as a fragment in his posthumously published, unfinished novel The Last Tycoon (1941) but he first published it in the early 1930s in the essay My Lost City, a kind of love letter to New York.  The quote is frequently misunderstood as an observation that for those Americans who suffer disgrace or destitution, there is no redemption, no coming back.  Comebacks in the US are of course frequent and some in politics have been remarkable.  What Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974) achieved in winning the presidency in 1968 was extraordinary and in matching that achievement in 2024, Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021 and since 2025) managed what must in 2021 have seemed impossible.  

Second (third, fourth etc) act specialist: Lindsay Lohan mug-shots 2007-2011.

However, from politics to pop culture, there are many examples of temporarily disreputable Americans resurrecting their public lives from all but the most ignominious opprobrium.  Fitzgerald was a professional writer and his observation was an allusion to the structure used by playwrights in traditional three-act theater: (1) problem, (2) complication & (3) solution.  He thought the nature of the American mind was to prefer to skip the second act, going straight from problem to resolution.  His point was well-made and it’s one of the themes of the narrative which underlies the discussions (which became arguments and sometimes squabbles) of military and political strategy between Washington and London during World War II (1939-1945).

Erase

Erase (pronounced ih-reys)

(1) To rub or scrape out, as letters or characters written, engraved etc; efface.

(2) Completely to eliminate.

(3) To remove material recorded on magnetic tape or magnetic disk; synonymous for most purposes in this context with delete although technically, in computing, an erasure is the substitution of data with characters representing a null value whereas a deletion is the removal of an pointer entry in an index.

1595–1605: From the Middle English arasen & aracen (to eradicate, remove), from the Latin ērāsus, past participle of ērādere (scrape out, scrape off, shave, abolish, remove, to abrade), the construct being ex (out of) + radere (to scratch, scrape).  The use in the context of data on magnetic storage media (tapes, disks) dates from 1945, the technical distinction between erase and delete defined in computer science theory as early as 1947 though, to this day, the distinction escapes most users.  The adjective erasable dates from 1829.  Eraser (thing that erases writing) is attested from 1790, an invention of American English, agent noun from erase.  Originally, the product was a knife with which to scraping off ink, the first rubber devices for removing pencil marks not available until from 1858.

Erasure, Comrade Stalin and Lindsay Lohan

Evil dictators (like those running beach clubs or Greek islands) have their problems too and they like them to go away.  Where problems exist, they like them to be erased or is some other way to disappear.  Sometimes, the technical term is “unpersoned”.

The Erased

Not best pleased at images of the pleasingly pneumatic Karolina Palazi appearing on the official Lohan Beach Club Mykonos Beach Club Instagram account, Lindsay Lohan quickly responded with a post demanding her staff “Erase this random person at my beach”.  In the digital age, it can be difficult entirely to erase anything which appears on the internet and probably impossible for anything distributed on the big-data social media platforms.  That said, there is unpredictability to the fate of anything ever on-line.  There is (1) material which genuinely vanishes forever, (2) stuff which proves impossible to eradicate despite best efforts, and (3) things which were thought lost, only to re-appear.  Noted for some time, the issue will be of increasing interest in the future, the internet being a distributed system with no centralised repository indicating what is held where, by whom and whether it is accessible (by someone) on or off-line or in storage.

The Disappeared

General Augusto Pinochet (1915–2006; military dictator of Chile 1973-1990).

This is the relatively new name for the centuries-old practice of secretly kidnapping or arresting people, then imprisoning or killing them, all without due process of law.  It’s most associated with the late twentieth-century military dictatorships in Chile, Argentina and Brazil but is used to describe the practice in many South and Central American republics and of late, others, sometimes at scale.  Although the practice probably pre-dates even modern humans, the word, in this context appears first to have been used by Joseph Heller (1923–1999) in the satirical Catch-22 (1961) when describing how the US military dealt with malcontents.  However it’s done, the person disappears without trace.

The Unpersoned

Unpersoning wasn’t invented in the Soviet Union but it was under comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) it was undertaken at scale, although, like later attempts on the internet, the process wasn’t always perfect because it was performed on extant physical material, some of which inevitably escaped attention.  The process interested critics in the West; in George Orwell's (1903–1950), dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), protagonist Winston Smith works at the Ministry of Truth where his job is to alter historical records to conform to the state's ever-changing version of history.  Done in the USSR mostly between 1928-1953, unpersoning was the physical modification of existing text and imagery, modified to erase from history those who had fallen from favor and it’s thought the most extensively unpersoned figure in the USSR was comrade Leon Trotsky (1879-1940).  Comrade Stalin had him murdered in Mexico, the assassin's choice of weapon an ice axe.

Erased from history: Before & after being unpersoned, Comrades Molotov (1890-1986) & Stalin with Comrade Nikolai Yezhov (1895-1940), head of the NKVD (one of the predecessors of the KGB); Comrade Stalin had him shot.

In the Soviet Union, the process was essentially as Orwell described and even in the age of digital editing it's probably often still done in a similar manner.  A photograph would be passed to the party's technicians with the comrade(s) to be unpersoned marked in some obvious way, the preferred technique apparently a black crayon.

Succeeding where others failed: Erasing crooked Hillary Clinton

The White House situation room, 2 May 2011 (official WH photo; left) and as depicted in Di Tzeitung (right).

Unpersoning can also be sex-specific (gender-based the currently preferred term).  In May 2011, the Orthodox Jewish news paper Di Tzeitung (a Brooklyn-based weekly) was forced to apologize after unpersoning the women in the photograph released by the White House showing President Barack Obama (b 1961; US president 2009-2017) and his staff monitoring the raid by US Navy Seals in which Osama bin Laden (1957-2011) was killed while in his Pakistani compound.  Unpersoned were then counterterrorism director, Audrey Tomason (b circa 1977) and then secretary of state, crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013).  Di Tzeitung's subsequent apology was somewhat nuanced.  The publication reiterated it did not publish images of women and thus sent its “regrets and apologies” to the White House and the State Department, not because it had unpersoned women but because their photo editor had not read the “fine print” in the text issued by the White House (which accompanied the photograph) which forbid any changes.  Di Tzeitung further explained it has a “long standing editorial policy” of not publishing images of women because its readers “believe that women should be appreciated for who they are and what they do, not for what they look like and the Jewish laws of modesty are an expression of respect for women, not the opposite”.  They added that Di Tzeitung regarded crooked Hillary Clinton (a former US senator (Democrat) for New York who secured overwhelming majorities in the Orthodox Jewish communities) highly and “appreciated her unique capabilities, talents and compassion for all”.  It concluded by acknowledging it “should not have published the altered picture”.  Commentators noted the practice is not unusual in some ultra-Orthodox Jewish publications which regard depictions of the female form as “immodest”.  Neither the White House nor the State Department responded to the apology although there were cynics who wondered if the president wished it were that easy to get rid of crooked Hillary.

The Watergate tapes and the erased 18½ minutes

Looking over his shoulder: Richard Nixon and HR Halderman in the White House.

Tapes, audio and video, have played a part in many political downfalls but none is more famous than the “smoking gun” tape which compelled the resignation of Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974) after it revealed he was involved in the attempt to cover-up the involvement in the Watergate break-in of some connected to his administration.  Recording conversations in the White House had been going on for years and Nixon initially had the equipment removed, the apparatus re-installed two years later after it was found there was no other way to ensure an accurate record of discussions was maintained.  Few outside a handful of the president’s inner circle knew of the tapes and they became public knowledge only in mid-1973 when, under oath before a congressional hearing, a White House official confirmed their existence.  That was the point at which Nixon should have destroyed the tapes and for the rest of his life he must sometimes have reflected that but for that mistake, his presidency might have survived because, although by then the Watergate scandal had been a destabilizing distraction, there was at that point no “smoking gun”, nothing which linked Nixon himself to any wrongdoing.  As it was, he didn’t and within days subpoenas were served on the White House demanding the tapes and that made them evidence; the moment for destruction had passed.  Nixon resisted the subpoenas, claiming executive privilege and thus ensued the tussle between the White House and Watergate affair prosecutors which would see the “Saturday Night Massacre” during which two attorneys-general were fired, the matter ultimately brought before the US Supreme Court which ruled against the president.  Finally, the subpoenaed tapes were surrendered on 5 August 1973, the “smoking gun” tape revealing Nixon and his chief of staff (HR Haldeman, 1926–1993; White House chief of staff 1969-1973) discussing a cover-up plan and at that point, political support in the congress began to evaporate and the president was advised that impeachment was certain and even Republican senators would vote to convict.  On 8 August, Nixon announced his resignation, leaving office the next day.

Uher 5000 reel-to-reel tape recorder used by a White House secretary to create the tape (20 June 1972) with the 18½ minute gap.  (Government Exhibit #60: Records of District Courts of the United States, Record Group 21. National Archives Identifier: 595593).

To this day, mystery surrounds one tape in particular, a recording of a discussion between Nixon and Halderman on 20 June 1972, three days after the Watergate break-in.  Of obviously great interest, when reviewed, there was found to be a gap of 18½ minutes, the explanations offered of how, why or by whom the erasure was effected ranging from the humorously accidental to the darkly conspiratorial but half a century on, it remains a mystery.  Taking advantage of new data-recovery technology, the US government did in subsequent decades make several attempts to “un-delete” the gap but without success and it may be, given the nature of magnetic tape, that there is literally nothing left to find.  However, the tape is stored in a secure, climate-controlled facility in case technical means emerge and while it’s unlikely the contents would reveal anything not already known or assumed, it would be of great interest to historians.  What would be even more interesting is the identity of who it was that erased the famous 18½ minutes but that will likely never be known; after fifty years, it’s thought that were there to be any death-bed confessions, they should by now have been heard.  Some have their lists of names of those who might have "pressed the erase button" and while mostly sub-sets of Watergate's "usual suspects", one who tends not to appear is Nixon himself, the usual consensus being he was technically too inept to operate a tape machine though it's not impossible he ordered someone to do the deed.  However it happened, the suspects most often mentioned as having had their "finger on the button" (which may have been a foot-pedal) are Nixon's secretary and his chief of staff.

Brobdingnagian

Brobdingnagian (pronounced brob-ding-nag-ee-uhn)

(1) Of huge size; gigantic; tremendous.

(2) Larger than typical or expected.

(3) In medicine (psychiatry & clinical ophthalmology), as the noun “brobdingnagian vision”, a hallucination or visual disorder in which objects appear larger or nearer than they are (macropsia).  The companion (antonym) condition is “lilliputian vision”, a hallucination or visual disorder in which objects appear smaller or more distant than they are (micropsia).

(4) In mycology, of the brobdingnagia, a genus of fungi in the family Phyllachoraceae.

(5) Of or pertaining to the fictional land of Brobdingnag.

(5) An inhabitant or native of the fictional land of Brobdingnag.

1728 (in more frequent use by mid-century): An adjective to convey the sense of “enormous in size, huge, immense, gigantic etc, derived from the noun Brobdingnag (the land of the giants) the second of the exotic lands visited by the protagonist Lemuel Gulliver in Gulliver’s Travels (1726 and titled Travels into several remote nations of the world for the first edition), written in the style of contemporary “travel guides” by the Anglo-Irish author & satirist Jonathan Swift (1667–1745).  The construct was Brobdingnag +‎ -ian.  The suffix -ian was a euphonic variant of –an & -n, from the Middle English -an, (regularly -ain, -ein & -en), from the Old French –ain & -ein (or before i, -en), the Modern French forms being –ain & -en (feminine -aine, -enne), from the Latin -iānus (the alternative forms were -ānus, -ēnus, -īnus & -ūnus), which formed adjectives of belonging or origin from a noun, being -nus (cognate with the Ancient Greek -νος (-nos)), preceded by a vowel, from the primitive Indo-European -nós.  It was cognate with the English -en.  Brobdingnagian is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is Brobdingnagians (initial upper case if used of the inhabitants or natives of the fictional land of Brobdingnag but not for other purposes (such as untypically large cosmic objects)).  To distinguish between big stuff, the comparative is “more brobdingnagian” and the superlative “most brobdingnagian”.

In constructing the name Brobdingnag for his fictional land of giants, Swift used a technique more subtle than some authors who use more obvious charactonyms.  In literature, a charactonym is a name given to a character that suggests something about their personality, behavior, or role in the story; these names almost always have some literal or symbolic meaning aligning with or hinting at the character’s traits and examples include:

Alfred Doolittle (lazy and opportunistic) in George Bernard Shaw’s (GBS; 1856-1950) Pygmalion (1913).

Miss Honey (sweet & gentle) in Roald Dahl’s (1916–1990) Matilda (1988) and Veruca Salt (harsh and unpleasant) in his Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964).

Mr Bumble (noted for his bumbling inept incompetence) in Charles Dickens’ (1812–1870) Oliver Twist (1837).

Willy Loman (of low social status and beset with feelings of inadequacy) in Arthur Miller’s (1915–2005) Death of a Salesman (1949).

The use of blatant charactonyms is not always an example of linguistic brutishness and it’s often used in children's literarure or when it’s demanded by the rhythm of text or plat.  There are also “reverse charactonyms” when the traits of a characteristic become famously (or infamously) emblematic of something such as Shylock in William Shakespeare’s (1564–1616) The Merchant of Venice (1598) or Ebenezer Scrooge in Dickens A Christmas Carol (1843).

A brobdingnagian on the beach; a Lindsay Lohan meme.  Although a Swiftian meme, the use of that term will now probably be more suggestive of a later Swift, certainly to Swifties (the devotees of the singer Taylor Swift (b 1989)).

As well as the meanings of words, Swift liked to use the sounds of language in fashioning fictional names which were both plausible and in some way suggestive of the association he wanted to summon.  Structurally, what he appears to have done is combine arbitrary syllables to create a word sounding foreign and exotic while still being pronounceable by the English-speaking audience for which he wrote; the technique is harder to master than it sounds although with modern generative AI, presumably it’s become easier.  As a literary trick, Brobdingnag works because of the elements in the construction (1) the multisyllabic length and (2) the use of “harsh” consonants (notably the “b” & “g” which lend a sense of bulk and largeness, appropriate for the “land of the giants”.  The other exotic land in Gulliver’s Travels was Lilliput, the place where the people are tiny.  Just as he intended Brobdingnag to invoke thoughts of something (or someone) clumsy and heavy, Lilliput and Lilliputian were meant to suggest “small, delicate”.

Map of Brobdingnag from the 1726 edition of Travels into several remote nations of the world (the original title of Gulliver's Travels).

Although since Swift, the adjective brobdingnagian has never gone away, it’s length and “unnatural” (for English) spelling has meant it’s only ever been a “niche” word”, used as a literary device and astronomers like it when writing of stars, galaxies, black holes and such which are of such dimensions that miles or kilometres are not c convenient measure, demanding instead terms like “light years” (the distance in which light travels in one Earth year” or “parsecs” (a unit of astronomical length, based on the distance from Earth at which a star would have a parallax of one second of arc which is equivalent to 206,265 times the distance from the earth to the sun or 3.26 light-years.  Its lineal equivalent is about 19.1 trillion miles (30.8 trillion km)).

The king of Brobdingnag and Gulliver, cartoon by James Gillray (1756-1815), published in London 10 February 1804 during the era of the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815).  British Cartoon Prints Collection, Library of Congress, Washington DC.

The work depicts the king of Brobdingnag (George III (1738–1820; King of Great Britain and Ireland 1760-1820)) staring intently at a tank in which is sailing Gulliver (Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821; leader of the French Republic 1799-1804 & Emperor of the French from 1804-1814 & 1815).  Lord Salisbury (1748–1823) stands behind the king.  It was a time when Napoleon was planning to invade England, his Grande Armée transported in “flat-bottomed boats” which were a sort of early landing craft, a design which would emerge in specialized forks for various purposes (troops, tanks etc) during World War II (1939-1945).  It wasn’t until the Royal Navy prevailed in the Battle of Trafalgar (21 October 1805) that the threat of invasion was ended.  At the time of the cartoon’s publication, George III had for some years already been displaying signs of mental instability (thought now to be consistent with bipolar disorder (the old manic depression)) although it would be almost a decade before his condition deteriorated to such an extent a regent was appointed.

Brobdingnagian’s more familiar role is in literature where it depends for effect on rarity; twice in the one book is one too many  Tellingly (and unsurprisingly given the inherent clumsiness), it’s rare in poetry although some have made the effort, possibly just to prove it can be done, one anonymous poet leaving us The Awful Fate of Mr. Foster, believed to be a parody of the poetic style of William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) “Brobdingnagian” interpolated possibly because Thackeray was wrote some acerbic critiques of Swift’s work:

He never more will rise again, or open those kind eyes again,
He lies beneath the sod;
Beneath the tall Brobdingnagian tomb, the popular concernment's doom,
Of an enormous god!