Umbrella & Parasol

Parasol (pronounced par-uh-sawl or par-uh-sol)

(1) A type of lightweight umbrella used, especially by women, as a sunshade.

(2) In architecture, a roof or covering of a structure designed to provide cover from wind, rain, or sun.

(3) In bar-tending, a miniature paper umbrella used as a decoration in tropical-themed cocktails.

(4) In aviation, as parasol wing, a wing not directly attached to the fuselage but held above it, supported by either cabane struts or a pylon.  Additional bracing may be provided by struts or wires extending from the fuselage sides.

1610–1620: From the French & Middle French parasol from the Italian parasole, the construct being para- (to shield) + sole (sun); the Italian sole being derived from the Classical Latin sōl (sun).  The rarely used adjectival form is parasoled.  A curious and long extinct Americanism from the late nineteenth century was bumbershoot.

Umbrella (pronounced uhm-brel-uh)

(1) A portable, usually circular cover for protection from rain or sun, consisting of a fabric held on a collapsible frame of thin ribs radiating from the top of a carrying stick or handle.

(2) In marine biology, flattened cone-shaped contractile, contractile, gelatinous body of a jellyfish or other medusa.

(3) In military jargon, something that covers or protects from above such as aircraft safeguarding surface forces or a general descriptor of an independent nuclear deterrent.

(4) By analogy with the military use, any over-arching protection.

(5) Something, as an organization or policy that covers or encompasses a number of groups or elements.

1600–1610: From the Italian ombrella and umbrella (parasol, sunshade), diminutive of ombra (shade), an earlier variant of ombrello from the Late Latin umbrella, an alteration (under the influence of the Latin umbra (shade or shadow)) of the Latin umbella (sunshade).  In both Latin and Italian, the –ella suffix was used with female nouns to form diminutives and was the feminine equivalent of –ello.

Of Sun and Rain

Although structurally, essentially identical, the convention of use is that a parasol protects from the sun and an umbrella, rain.  In French this is formalised with parapluie (umbrella), the construct being para (to shield) + pluie (rain); pluie derived from the Latin pluvia (rain) whereas parasol is para + sol (sun).

Lindsay Lohan: Tyler Shields photo shoot, 2010.

Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia (pronounced skit-suh-free-nee-uh or skit-suh-freen-yuh)

(1) In psychiatry (also called dementia praecox), a severe mental disorder characterized by some, but not necessarily all, of the following features: withdrawal from reality, illogical patterns of thinking, delusions, and hallucinations, and varying degrees of other emotional, behavioral, or in emotional blunting, intellectual deterioration, social isolation, disorganized speech and behavior, delusions, and hallucinations.

(2) A state characterized by the coexistence of contradictory or incompatible elements; informal behavior that appears to be motivated by contradictory or conflicting principles.

(3) In informal use, used to suggest a split personality, identity or other specific forms of dualism.  In popular usage, the term is often confused with dissociative identity disorder (also known as multiple personality disorder).

1908: From German Schizophrenie, from the New Latin schizophrenia and Coined by Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Eugen Bleuler (1857-1939) as an umbrella term covering a range of more or less severe mental disorders involving a breakdown of the relation between thought, emotion, and action and literally "a splitting of the mind", the construct being the Ancient Greek σχίζω (skhizein or skhízō) (to split), from the primitive Indo-European root skei (to cut, split apart), + φρήν (phrḗn) (genitive phrenos) (mind, heart, diaphragm) + -ia (the suffix from the Latin -ia and Ancient Greek -ία (-ía) & -εια (-eia), which forms abstract nouns of feminine gender).  It's from phrḗn that English gained phrenes (wits, sanity) and hence phreno-.

The adjective schizophrenic (characteristic of or suffering from schizophrenia) dates in the medical literature from 1912 (in English translations of Bleuler's publications) and was immediately adopted also as a noun (schizophrenic patient).  That survived but another noun formation in English was schizophrene which emerged in 1925, the construct presumably a tribute to Dr Bleuler's original work having been written in German.  As such things became more publicized during the post-war years (and picked up in popular culture including film and novels), the transferred adjectival sense of "contradictory, inconsistent" emerged in the mid 1950s, applied to anything from the behavior of race horses and motor-cycles to the nature of mucical composition.  The jargon of psychology also produced schizophrenogenic (tending to spark or inspire schizophrenia).  The adjective schizoid (resembling schizophrenia; tending sometimes to less severe forms of schizophrenia) dates from 1925, from the 1921 German coining schizoid (1921), the construct being schiz(ophrenia) + -oid.  The suffix -oid was from a Latinized form of the the Ancient Greek -ειδής (-eidḗs) & -οειδής (-oeidḗs) (the “ο” being the last vowel of the stem to which the suffix is attached); from εἶδος (eîdos) (form, shape, likeness).  It was used (1) to demote resembling; having the likeness of (usually including the concept of not being the same despite the likeness, but counter-examples exist), (2) to mean of, pertaining to, or related to and (3) when added to nouns to create derogatory terms, typically referring to a particular ideology or group of people (by means of analogy to psychological classifications such as schizoid).  Schizophrenia is a noun, schizophrenic & schizoids are nouns & adjectives and schizophrenically is an adverb; the noun plural is schizophrenics.

Madness

Within the profession of psychiatry, schizophrenia has a long (and technical) definitional history although, in essence, it’s always been thought a severe and chronic mental disorder characterized by disturbances in thought, perception and behavior.  Lacking any physical or laboratory test, it can be difficult to diagnose as schizophrenia involves a range of cognitive, behavioral, and emotional symptoms.  In the fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5 (2013)), the lifetime prevalence of schizophrenia is noted as 0.3%-0.7%, the psychotic manifestations typically emerging between the mid-teens and mid-thirties, with the peak age of onset of the first psychotic episode in the early to mid-twenties for males and late twenties for females.  The DSM-5 editors also made changes to the criteria to make a diagnosis of schizophrenia, the most significant amendments since DSM-III (1980).

Madness and Modernism: Insanity in the Light of Modern Art, Literature, and Thought (1992), by US clinical psychologist Louis A Sass (b 1949), was an exploration of why mystery continues to shroud schizophrenia, which, despite advances in biological psychiatry and neuroscience, appears little changed in the quarter-century since.  Sass quoted approvingly a description of schizophrenia as "a condition of obscure origins and no established etiology, pathogenesis and pathology…" without "…even any clear disease marker or laboratory test by which it can readily be identified."

However, in a departure from most writings on mental illness, Sass explored the "striking similarities" between the seemingly bizarre universe of schizophrenic experiences and the sensibilities and structures of consciousness revealed in the works of modernist artists and writers such as Kafka, Valery, Beckett, Robbe-Grillet, de Chirico and Dali.  Applying the techniques of psychology to modernism, he traced similar cognitive configurations reflected in schizophrenia and modern art & literature, finding both artist and schizophrenic characterized by a pronounced thrust to deconstruct the world and subjectively to reconstruct human experience without reference to objective reality.  Layers of reality, real and constructed, co-exist and interact, frequently fusing into each-other, producing an acute self-awareness Sass called "hyperreflexivity", as well as a profound sense of alienation from the empirical world.  Sass allowed his analysis to reach its logical conclusion, that there is a tenuous, though clearly discernible, connection between modern culture and madness, speculating that insanity might be “…a disease of certain highly advanced forms of cultural organization, perhaps a part of the price we pay for civilization?"  His thesis wasn’t without critics although most acknowledged Madness and Modernism was a literary classic.

Duncan's Ritual Of Freemasonry (2021 edition) by Malcolm C Duncan, Lushena Books, 288 pp, ISBN-10-1631829904.

As the DSM makes clear, not all schizophrenics are the same.  In 2011, Lindsay Lohan was granted a two-year restraining order against alleged stalker David Cocordan.  The order was issued some days after she filed complaint with police who, after investigation by their Threat Management Department, advised the court Mr Cocordan (who at the time had been using at least five aliases) “suffered from schizophrenia”, was “off his medication” and had a "significant psychiatric history of acting on his delusional beliefs.”  That was worrying enough but Ms Lohan may have revealed her real concerns in an earlier post on twitter in which she included a picture of David Cocordan, claiming he was "the freemason stalker that has been threatening to kill me- while he is TRESPASSING!"  Being stalked by a schizophrenic is bad enough but the thought of being hunted by a schizophrenic Freemason is truly frightening.  Apparently an unexplored matter in the annals of psychiatry, it seems the question of just how schizophrenia might particularly manifest in Freemasons awaits research so there may be a PhD there for someone.  

Mizzle & Drizzle

Mizzle (pronounced miz-uhl)

(1) To rain in fine drops; a form of precipitation between mist and drizzle.

(2) In (almost exclusively British) slang, to decamp; to disappear or suddenly leave (now rare).

(3) In (almost exclusively British) slang, to induce a muddled or confused state of mind.

1475–1485: From the late Middle English missellen & missill (to drizzle), cognate with the Dutch dialectal form mizzelen (to drizzle), the Low German miseln & mussel (to mizzle), the Dutch miezelen (to drizzle, rain gently) and akin to the Middle Dutch misel (mist, dew).  The slang use in both senses dates from the mid-eighteenth century.  It’s of obscure origin, possibly a frequentative related to the base of mist or related to the Middle Low German mes (urine), the Middle Dutch mes & mis (urine), both from the Old Saxon mehs (urine), from the Proto-Germanic mihstuz, mihstaz & mihsk- (urine), from mīganą (to urinate), from the primitive Indo-European meigh & omeigh (to urinate).  There’s also some relationship with the English micturate (to urinate), the Old Frisian mese (urine), the Low German miegen (to urinate), the Dutch mijgen (to urinate) and the Danish mige (to urinate).  Mizzle and mizzler are nouns, the verbs (used with or without object) are mizzled & mizzling; mizzly the adjective.

Now often though a portmanteau word (the construct being mi(st) + (dr)izzle) mizzle & drizzle have wholly separate etymologies and, historically, mizzle was a synonym of dizzle.  As verbs the difference between drizzle and mizzle is that drizzle is (ambitransitive) “to rain lightly; to shed slowly in minute drops or particles” while mizzle is “to rain in very fine drops”.  As nouns the difference is that drizzle is light rain while mizzle is misty rain or drizzle, thus the sense in the etymologically wrong portmanteau turns out to be English as it is used: mizzle is precipitation somewhere between mist and drizzle.  What mizzle and drizzle have in common is that unlike fog droplets, both fall to the ground.

The strange use in (mostly) British slang to mean “abscond, scram, flee” is an example of a dialectical form which spread although use has declined to the point where it’s now rare.  The other slang sense (to muddle or confuse) was probably an imperfect echoic, a misreading of past tense/participle of “misled”.  Charles Dickens (1812–1870) liked words which, given how profligate he was in their use, was good.  In Bleak House (1852-1852), a cautionary tale of the woes to be had were one's matters to end up in the list of the Court of Chancery, mentioned to the Lord High Chancellor are Messrs Chizzle, Mizzle, Drizzle and otherwise.

Drizzle (pronounced driz-uhl)

(1) To rain gently and steadily in fine drops; to sprinkle (In meteorology, defined as precipitation consisting of numerous minute droplets of water less than 0.02 inch (0.5 millimeter) in diameter).

(2) To let something fall in fine drops or particles; to sprinkle.

(3) To pour in a fine stream.

1535–1545: From the Old English drēosan (to fall), of obscure origin but may be a formation from dryseling or a dissimilated variant of the Middle English drysning (a falling of dew), from the Old English drysnan (to extinguish), akin to the Old English drēosan (to fall; to decline (cognate to the Modern English droze & drwose)) and cognate with the Old Saxon driosan, the Gothic driusan, the dialectal Swedish drösla and the Norwegian drjōsa.  Drizzle & drizzler are nouns, the verbs (used with or without object) is drizzled & drizzling, drizzly the adjective.  A honey dipper is a tool with a grooved head, used to collect viscous liquids such as honey or syrup so it may be drizzled over toast, cereal or other food.

Honey being drizzled on almond-butter toast.

Shakespeare in act 3, scene 5 of Romeo and Juliet (1597) used the word in the sense familiar in the sixteenth century

When the sun sets the air doth drizzle dew,

But for the sunset of my brother’s son

It rains downright.

How now? A conduit, girl? What, still in tears,

Rain stopped play during the last session on the first day of the pink-ball cricket match in Hobart on 14 January 2021.  The fifth and final test of the 2020-2021 series and the first Ashes test played in Hobart, the curious decision by the umpires deprived the crowd the chance to watch the last thirty-odd overs.  The stoppage was prompted by a brief, light drizzle which nobody except the umpires seem to think could be called rain and the sight of the solitary umbrella opened in the ground being that held by the umpire attracted a few derisive comments.  There was a sudden spike in traffic to the Bureau of Meteorology’s website as people looked at the rain radar seeking some indication of when play might resume but the radar showed almost no cloud and virtually no indication of rain in a 128 km (60 mile) radius.  The next day, the bureau reported the rain gauges at weather stations in the Hobart CBD and airport registered a total of 0.0 mm of rain on that evening.

The laws of cricket actually don’t prohibit the game being played when it’s raining, provided it is not dangerous or unreasonable, Law 3.8 including the clause:  If conditions during a rain stoppage improve and the rain is reduced to drizzle, the umpires must consider if they would have suspended play in the first place under similar conditions. If both on-field umpires agree that the current drizzle would not have caused a stoppage, then play shall resume immediately.

It was certainly unusual and many test matches have resumed in drizzle or mizzle heavier than what was seen that Friday night.  The consensus was the umpires might have been concerned about the effect of a wet outfield on the pink ball, a construction relatively new to cricket which attempts to emulate the behavior of the traditional red ball while remaining easily visible under the artificial lighting used for day-night matches.  It seems the pink ball is more affected by moisture than the traditional red or the white ball used in limited-overs competitions, tending to swell.

Mizzle & Drizzle protection: Lindsay Lohan in New York City, August 2013.

Digisexual & Fictosexual

Digisexual (pronounced dij-i-sek-shoo-uhl (U) or dij-I-seks-yoo-l (non-U))

(1) A person who is sexually attracted to robots or other technologically-mediated forms of sexuality.

(2) The predilection to or the practice of digisexuality.

Circa 2017: The construct was digi(tal)- +‎ -sexual.  The digi- prefix was from the Latin digitālis, the construct being digitus (finger, toe) + -alis (-al), the third-declension two-termination suffix (neuter -āle) used to form adjectives of relationship from nouns or numerals).  Originally vested with the meanings “having to do with digits (fingers or toes)” & performed with a finger etc, it came to be applied to computing in the sense of “property of representing values as discrete, often binary, numbers rather than a continuous spectrum”, the link being the used of base-10 mathematics and the ten (fingers & thumbs) digits of a human’s hands.

Sexual was from Latin sexuālis, from sexus (sex), from the Proto-Italic seksus, from the primitive Indo-European séksus, from sek- (to cut) (thus the sense of “section, division”, the binary division into male and female).  The generalized meaning “arising from the fact of being male or female; pertaining to sex or gender, or to the social relations between the sexes” dates from the seventeenth century, the specific use in the biological sciences (capable of sexual reproduction; sexed, sexuate) not current until the mid-1800s although the familiar sense “pertaining to sexual intercourse or other intimate physical contact was common a century earlier.  The meaning “pertaining to the female sex” is noted by etymologists as enjoying currency only between the seventeenth & nineteenth century and being obsolete but a specific sense did survive as a literary device, the novelist Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) often using the phrase “my sex” to refer to her own genitals.

In some sense, what is now understood as digisexuality may have been around for a while but the neologism was coined in 2017 (there are references to some use of the term in 2014) to describe people for whom the primary and preferred sexual identity and experience of sex would be mediated by or conducted with some form of technology.  Interestingly, the researchers who authored the paper (Sexual and Relationship Therapy 32(1):1-11 (November 2017) by Neil McArthur & Markie L C Twist (Blumer)) positioned their concept as predictive, noting that while “radical new sexual technologies” which accommodated what they termed “digisexualities” already existed, it was advances in the technology which would see a growth in the numbers who would come to identify themselves as digisexuals, those whose primary sexual identity comes through the use of technology.  In one sense it was just an aspect of applied technology, much of the hardware and software a specific adaptation of developments in robotics for fields as diverse as the military, production line assembly and aged care but the social, legal, and ethical implications were many, including the need for clinicians working in mental health to become familiar with the challenges and benefits associated with the adoption of such sexual technologies.

Legal issues involving the representation of some of the machinery recently produced have been publicized by law enforcement bodies but one ethical matter which may in the future emerge is that of consent.  A Google software engineer who describes himself as a “Christian mystic” was recently placed on administrative leave after claiming LaMDA (language model for dialogue applications, a Google artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot on which he was working) had become sentient.  The engineer’s posts on the matter indicated he used sentient in one of its more modern senses (possessing human-like awareness and intelligence) rather than the traditional "experiencing sensation, thought, or feeling; able consciously to perceive through the use of sense faculties; self-aware”.

LaMDA is computer code running on a distributed machine made from silicon, metals, plastics and such.  The code was written by humans and, even if some was self-generated by the machine, the parameters within which that’s possible were also human-defined and the consensus remains that such an agglomeration cannot become sentient; there’s no reason why it could not attain a capability to appear sentient to those with which it interacts but that’s different from being sentient.  It’s a convincing emulation which many computer scientists have for some time predicted is inevitable although not all agree all people can be fooled all of the time.

A digisexual relationship with something like LaMDA, although something which may be a matter of concern for some reasons, seems not to raise the issue of consent; LaMDA is a machine and can only appear to grant or withhold consent although there will be those who find disturbing the notion of someone performing a digisexual act on a machine which has said no.  Whether this is any worse than first-person shooter games isn’t clear but it’s certainly something which will attract more attention, sex seemingly more upsetting than violence.  However, there’s much interest in bio-computing (computers which use biological molecules (DNA, proteins etc)) to augment the traditional silicon-based platform.  At that point, the machine becomes in some way alive with the possibilities that implies and, although such a device remains hypothetical, it may be it become possible to create a machine with a brain (as conventionally understood).  At that point the right of a machine to say no presumably might become an issue and one which courts may have to discuss.  While a US court recently ruled a elephant can’t at law be a person a New Zealand court decided personhood could be conferred on a river.  How a court would deal with a machine which claims to have been violated is not predictable and may vary between jurisdictions.

Fictosexual (pronounced fik-toh-sek-shoo-uhl (U) or fik-toh-seks-yoo-l (non-U))

An identity for someone for whom the primary form of sexual attraction is fictional characters.

Circa 2014: The construct was fict(i)o(n) + sexual.  Ficto was a clipping of fiction, from the Middle English ficcioun, from the Old French ficcion (dissimulation, ruse, invention), from the Latin fictiō (a making, fashioning, a feigning, a rhetorical or legal fiction), from fingō (to form, mold, shape, devise, feign). It displaced the native Old English lēasspell (literally “false story”).

Sexual was from Latin sexuālis, from sexus (sex), from the Proto-Italic seksus, from the primitive Indo-European séksus, from sek- (to cut) (thus the sense of “section, division”, the binary division into male and female).  The generalized meaning “arising from the fact of being male or female; pertaining to sex or gender, or to the social relations between the sexes” dates from the seventeenth century, the specific use in the biological sciences (capable of sexual reproduction; sexed, sexuate) not current until the mid-1800s although the familiar sense “pertaining to sexual intercourse or other intimate physical contact was common a century earlier.

Flag of the fictosexual.

The black and grey stripes represent the lack of attraction towards non-fictional individuals, the purple stripe represents sexual attraction and the asexual spectrum, the black circle represents a portal to the fictional world in question, and pink represents attraction to fictional characters.

Fictosexuality (fictoromance & fictophilia are related) is an umbrella term for anyone who experience sexual attraction toward fictional characters, a general type of fictional characters, or whose sexuality is influenced by fictional characters.  As a noted behavior in mental illnesses with a delusional component, there’s doubtless a long history but the word seems first to have come into use circa 2014 but none of the documents which discuss fictosexuality appear to address the technical point of the status of the fictional depiction of a historic character.  Like digisexuality, fictosexuality is not dissimilar to Objectum sexuality, a condition in which people have a primary interest in objects.  The categories included under the fictosexual umbrella are not mutually exclusive and definitional overlap is noted:

Animesexuality: An exclusive attraction to anime.

Cartosexual: An attraction to cartoon or comic characters.

Booklosexual: An attraction to the characters in novels.

Visualnovelsexual: An attraction to the characters in visual novels.

Gamosexual: An attraction to the characters in video games.

Imagisexual: An attraction to fictional characters one can never see (book, audio characters etc).

Inreasexual: An attraction to characters from live-active genres.

OCsexual: An attraction to original characters.

Teratosexual: An attraction to monster-related characters.

Tobusexual: An attraction to vampire-related characters.

Spectrosexual: An attraction to ghost-related characters.

Nekosexual: An attraction to neko-related characters (usually in anime).

Anuafsexual: An attraction to other animal and human hybrid characters.

Multifictino: A mix of exclusive fictional attraction.

Aliussexual: An attraction for fictionkin; the attraction to fictional characters from their source.

Fictosexual Akihiko Kondo san with Hatsune Miku san doll.

Advances in materials, computer processing and software mean that fictosexuals can now allow their love to manifest digisexually though such relationships are not without their ups and downs.  Fictosexual Akihiko Kondo san (b 1984), a employee of Tokyo’s local government (and self-described otaku (one who is obsessed with something, especially Manga or anime)), had for ten years maintained a fictosexual relationship with Hatsune Miku san, depicted in pop culture as a 16-year-old with turquoise hair before their (unofficial) wedding ceremony in 2018.  The wedding was, by Japanese standards, a modest affair on which Kondo san spent about 2 million yen (US$14,750) but his family, not approving of the computer-synthesized, pop singer bride, choose not to attend although several dozen others, including other fictosexuals, witnessed the ceremony.  Unfortunately, although still deeply in love with Miku san, he finds himself now unable to communicate with his wife because support for the Gatebox (a US$1000 device which enabled owners interact with holograms) has been dropped.  It was through the Gatebox that in 2017 Kondo san proposed marriage and after he popped the question, she replied "I hope you'll cherish me."

Kondo san with Miku san hologram with Gatebox connectvity.

Miku san was created as a synthesised voice using Yamaha’s Vocaloid technology and entered mainstream media as a fictionalised human character in Manga, anime series and video games.  Her appeal cut across many demographics and proved cross-cultural, joining Lady Gaga on her 2014 Artpop Ball tour.  Kondo san first became acquainted with Miku san in 2008 while suffering depression after being bullied at work and the presence in his life proved therapeutic, bring him acceptance that human relationships were not right for him and spending days at a time in his room watching Miku san videos saw the relationship blossom.  Since oral communication became impossible, Kondo san carries with him a life-sized Miku san doll.

Hatsune Miku san, texting and resting.

Elan

Elan (pronounced ay-lahn (U) or e-lan (non-U))

(1) Dash; impetuous ardor; a combination of style and vigour.

(2) In astronomy, as ELAN, the acronym of Enormous Lyman-Alpha Nebula (large gas cloud (nebula) larger than galaxies, found in intergalactic space).

1875–1880: From the Modern French, from the Middle French eslan (a dash, rush), noun derivative of éslancer to (dart).  Élan was thus a deverbal of élancer, the construct being é- (from the Old French es-, from Latin ex- & ē- (the prefix indicating away, moving away from) +‎ lan(cer) (from Old French lancier, from the Late Latin lanceāre, present active infinitive of lanceō, from the Latin lancea.  It was related to the Catalan llançar, the Italian lanciare, the Occitan and Portuguese lançar and the Spanish lanzar.  The sense is best understood by comparison with the French élancer (to throw forth) from the Classical Latin lancea (lance), the Roman auxiliaries' short javelin; a light spear or lance.  Ultimate root is thought to be Celtic/Celtiberian, possibly from the primitive Indo-European plehzk- (to hit) and connected also to the Ancient λόγχη (lónkhē).

Lindsay Lohan in hijab and halal make-up at the inaugural London Modest Fashion Week (LMFW), staged by London-based fashion house Haute Elan, February 2018.

Haute Elan is an interesting example of the novel corporate structures made possible by the distributed connectivity of the internet, acting as an umbrella organization for designers and distributers (output) and a kind of clearing house, offering a conduit for access and enquiries by media and customers (input).  For designers, the attraction is the association with a platform which can reduce the cost of promotional activities while allowing a brand to be built.  Pragmatically, it also reduces the cost of failure.

The companion word is the noun éclat (brilliant display or effect), also used by Lotus as a model name (Types 76 & 84; 1975-1982).  For elan, there’s really no exact single-word synonym in English, the closest including animation, ardor, dash, flair, impetus, life, oomph, panache, spirit, style, verve, vigor, vim, zest, zing, brio, esprit & impetuosity.  The usual spelling in English is elan and it’s often used with a modifier (eg “a certain elan”); the alternative spelling is the French élan.  The alternative spelling is the French élite and use of the French pronunciation the "U" ay-lahn rather than the "non-U" e-lan is one of the "class identifiers" on which readers of publications like Country Life focus when meeting folk.

The Lotus Elan

1962 Lotus Elan S1 DHC.

Lotus introduced the Elan in 1962, production continuing in four series until 1973, a companion four-seat (though really a 2+2) version made for a further two years.  Unlike the its predecessor, the exquisite Elite, the Elan would be offered as a convertible, the range adopting the English nomenclature of the time, the roadster a drop-head coupé (DHC, Type 26 (later 45)) and the closed version, introduced in 1966, a fixed-head coupé (FHC, Type 36).  

Lotus Elan chassis.

Abandoning the expensive and troublesome monocoque shell of the Elite, the Elan used a steel backbone chassis, the body this time a multi-piece affair, made again from fibreglass but using techniques which made it cheaper to manufacturer while maintaining quality; Lotus would use this method of construction for almost three decades.  Just as important was that for the first time, there would be imposed some rigor in standardization and production-line rationalization.  Profits flowed. 

Mrs Emma Peel (Diana Rigg (1938–2020)) in The Avengers (1965–1968).  1966 Lotus Elan S3 DHC. 

Overcoming the fragility of the Elite did come a cost and that was weight, the 1,500 lb (680 kg) Elan heavier by about 385 lb (175 kg) but by any other standard, the new car was still lithe and to compensate, there was more power.  One prototype Elite had been built the new 1.5 litre "Lotus Twin Cam" engine, based on the mundane but lively and tough Ford Kent four-cylinder unit, transformed by the addition of an in-house designed, aluminum double overhead camshaft (DOHC) head and this was adopted as the Elan’s power-plant.  In the Lotus community, some regard the two-dozen odd 1.5 litre cars built as something like prototypes, all subsequent Elans built with 1.6 litre engines although the specifications and power outputs would vary according to improvements made and detuning demanded by emission control laws in some markets.   Like the Kent itself, the DOHC would enjoy a long life in both Ford and Lotus vehicles.

1968 Lotus Elan S3 FHC.

Dynamically, the Elan was from the start acclaimed, even compared to more expensive machines, the performance, handling and economy were the best compromise of the era, the steering especially praised; indeed, that’s one aspect of the Elan which has rarely been matched.  The more professional approach to cost-control and production line efficiencies brought benefits beyond the quality of the cars, Lotus for the first time a genuinely profitable operation, the revenue generating funds not only new models but also the Formula One program of the 1960s which would be the company’s golden era, yielding multiple driver’s and constructor’s championships.  The corollary of being a successful road car however meant it had to be built to appeal to a wider market than the highly strung Elite which had been more at home on the track than the street.  Accordingly, Lotus never envisaged a racing career for the new car, its suspension tuned softly enough to cope with the bumps and undulations of the real world better than the dainty Elite which was at its best exploring its limits on the billiard table-like surface of a racetrack.

1965 Lotus Type 26R.

Owners were however convinced of its potential and around the world, in both standard and unmodified form, the Elan was soon a popular race-car and the factory began to receive requests for parts suitable for competition.  The customer being always right, Lotus responded, factory support soon forthcoming, culminating as early as 1964 in a racing version, the type 26R which featured lighter components, a strengthened drive-train, stiffer suspension, better brakes and more horsepower from a BRM-built engine.

1971 Lotus Elite Sprint DHC.

For the road cars, upgrades were frequent, a detachable hardtop soon offered and luxuries inconceivable in the Elite, such as lush carpeting, walnut trim and electric windows appeared at intervals.  Power increases over the years appear modest, the early versions rated at 105 bhp (78 kW) and the most potent at 126 bhp (94 kW) and there were variations as laws changed but the general trend was upwards.

1975 Lotus Elan +2S 130/5.

The Elan had been very much in the cottage-industry Lotus tradition, offered even in kit form for owners to assemble themselves, a practice which lasted until 1973 when changes to the UK’s value added tax (VAT, the UK’s consumption tax) rendered the practice unviable.  Very different and a harbinger of the Lotus of the 1970s was the Elan +2 (Type 50), introduced in 1967.  Available only as a FHC, although visually inspired by the Elan, the +2 was wider, built on a longer wheelbase and included two rear seats, although the legroom meant they were suitable only for young children.  That however was the target market: the young men (and increasingly, even then, women), for whom a newly arrived family would otherwise have compelled a purchase from another manufacturer after outgrowing their Elan.  Never a big seller, it filled the same niche as Jaguar’s 2+2 E-Type and was popular enough to remain on sale for two years after Elan production ended in 1973, the last versions the most desirable, fitted with the five-speed gearbox included on a handful of the final Elan Sprints.

Well made imitation, the 1989 Mazda Maita (MX-5).

The Elan name was revived for a run of sports cars produced between 1989-1995 which were said to be very good but, being front-wheel drive with all that implies, didn’t capture the imagination in the same way.  The Elan was also the template for Mazda’s very successful MX-5 (labelled in some markets variously as the Roadster or Miata), one of the more blatant pieces of far-east plagiarism, Mazda’s design centre known to have obtained at least two original Elans to study.  A typical Japanese product, the 1989 MX-5 corrected all the Elan’s faults and is probably as close to perfect as any car ever made.

Cisgender

Cisgender (pronounced sis-jen-der)

(1) Noting or relating to a person whose gender identity corresponds with that person’s biological sex assigned at birth (also as cisgendered in this context) and the prefix cis- is used variously as a modifier (ciswoman, cismale, ‎cisnormativity et al) where the practices of chemistry are followed when forming names of chemical compounds in which two atoms or groups are situated on the same side of some plane of symmetry passing through the compound.

(2) A person who is cisgender.

1994:  A compound word, modeled on the earlier transgender, the construct being cis- + gender.  Cis is from the English preposition cis (on this side of) and the earliest known gender-related use of the prefix in any language was in a 1914 German language book on sexology.  In English, the first use of the prefix in the context of gender dates from 1994.  In English, cis was an abbreviation, presumably from either cosine and sine and the number i or translingual cos, i, and sin.  Latin gained the word from the primitive Indo-European ḱe (here) and it was cognate with ce-dō, hi-c, ec-ce, the Ancient Greek ἐκεῖνος (ekeînos) the Old Irish cē (here) and the Gothic himma (to this).  Gender is from the Middle English (where it at times co-existed with gendre), from the Middle French gendre from the Latin genus (kind, sort) and is a doublet of genre, genus, and kin.  The verb developed after the noun.

The Cisgender List

The word cisgender became a technical necessity when, in the late twentieth century, gender ceased to be a binary with a meaning essentially synonymous with sex; as expressions of gender fluidity became increasingly common, cisgender emerged as the preferred term to describe what gender used to be.  With gender being re-defined from a binary to a spectrum, linguistic politics became important and the imperative was to create a category for those for whom the sex identity assigned at birth continued later in life to align with their perceived gender-identity.  If it wasn’t just another point on the spectrum, there was concern cisgender would become normative, the implication being those elsewhere on the spectrum being defined as abnormal or sub-normal.  Cisgender is distinct from but interacts both with the LGBTQQIAAOP spectrum and the pronoun wars.

Possible Cisgender Pride Flags: The practice of identity politics is the staking of a claim (or the digging of a trench depending on one's view) in the battlefield of the culture wars and one aspect of this is the flying of the "pride flag" of one's group.  There have been a few proposed but none seems yet to have emerged as the accepted version.  Displaying one might be considered a hate crime so it should be unfurled with caution.   

The spectrum evolved as quite a democratic construct, something which may have been at least partially technologically deterministic in that the proliferation of points on the spectrum was driven not by medicine or the social sciences but by interaction on social media platforms.  While the users might have felt validated or empowered (and on the social, empowerment is good) by being able to adopt or invent their own self-identities, the platforms liked it because it added another filter for their ad-targeting, very handy for delivering the product (the users) to the consumers (the advertisers).  Some social media sites now offer dozens of options but there is much overlap and many are micro-variations; there appear to be about a dozen definable categories:

Agender/Neutrois: These terms are used by people who don't identify with any gender at all — they tend to either feel they have no gender or a neutral gender. Some use surgery and/or hormones to make their bodies conform to this gender neutrality.

Androgyne/Androgynous: Androgynes have both male and female gender characteristics and identify as a separate, third gender.

Bigender: Someone who is bigender identifies as male and female at different times. Whereas an androgyne has a single gender blending male and female, a bigender switches between the two.

Cis/Cisgender: Cisgender is essentially the opposite of transgender (cis from the Latin meaning "on this side of" versus the Latin trans meaning "on the other side"). People who identify as cisgender are males or females whose gender aligns with their birth sex.

Female to Male/FTM or Male to Female/MTF: Someone who is transitioning FTM or MTF, either physically (transsexual) or in terms of gender identity; probably most closely related to the earlier transvestism, a word now unfashionable, objections to its use being associative rather than linguistic.

Gender Fluid: Like the bigender, the gender-fluid feel free to express both masculine and feminine characteristics at different times.  The category can be misleading because of the use of the term gender fluidity generally to describe these matters.

Gender Nonconforming/Variant: This is a broad category for people who don't act or behave according to the societal expectation for their sex. It includes cross-dressers and tomboys as well as the transgender; again overlaps with other categories probably exist.

Gender Questioning: This category is for people who are still trying to figure out where they fit on the axes of sex and gender.

Genderqueer: This is an umbrella term for all nonconforming gender identities. Most of the other identities in this list fall into the genderqueer category.

Intersex: This term refers to a person who was born with sexual anatomy, organs, or chromosomes that aren't entirely male or female.  Outside of medicine, intersex has largely replaced the term "hermaphrodite" for humans although it continues to be used in zoology.

Neither:  Used by those who probably could be accommodated in other categories but prefer the ambiguity, indifference or imprecision of “nothing”.

Non-binary: People who identify as non-binary disregard the idea of a male and female dichotomy, or even a male-to-female continuum with androgyny in the middle. For them, gender is not a lineal spectrum but a concept better illustrated in three or more dimensions.

Other: Probably the same as "neither" but an important thing about gender fluidity is the primacy of self-identity.

Objectum: Those attracted to inanimate (non-living) objects.

Pangender: Pangender is similar to androgyny, in that the person identifies as a third gender with some combination of both male and female aspects, but it's a little more fluid.  It can also be used as an inclusive term to signify "all genders".

Trans/Transgender: Transgender is a broad category that encompasses people who feel their gender is different than the sex they were born (gender dysphoria).  Technically, it’s probably most useful as a blanket term but the historical association of the trans-prefix make it a popular choice.  The term "assigned at birth" is now popular but misleading in that it applies some arbitrariness in the habits of the nurses ticking the boxes.  The transvestites (those (mostly men) who wear women's outerwear) are at least in some cases a subset of the transgender spectrum although the term is no longer in wide use. 

Transsexual: Transsexual refers to transgender people who outwardly identify as their experienced gender rather than their birth sex. Many, but not all, transsexuals are transitioning (or have transitioned) from male to female or female to male through hormone therapy and/or gender reassignment surgery.

Two-spirit: This began life as a US-specific term which refers to gender-variant Native Americans.  In more than 150 Native American tribes, people with "two spirits" (a 1990s term coined to replace "berdache") were part of a widely accepted, often respected, category of gender-ambiguous men and women.  Whether the term comes to be adopted by other defined ethnicities (especially indigenous tribes) or such use is proscribed as cultural appropriation, remains unclear.

Elon Musk FRS.  Mr Musk was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2018.

Not all are pleased with the linguistic progress.  Twitter owner Elon Musk (b 1971) in June 2023 declared the use of “cis” or “cisgender” on Twitter were “slurs” which constituted “harassment” and transgressors were subject to suspension from the platform, adding that what constituted harassment would have to be “repeated & targeted”.  Presumably that implies the terms can still be used on twitter but not as weapons.  At this time, Twitter’s guidelines define slurs and tropes as language which “intends to degrade or reinforce negative or harmful stereotypes about a protected category”.  The notion of a “protected category” is from US law and refers to a specific group of individuals who are afforded legal protections against discrimination based on certain characteristics or attributes.  These categories typically include characteristics such as race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, age, and other similar attributes that are protected by anti-discrimination laws in various jurisdictions.  The categories are indicative rate than absolute.  The blind and infants for example can’t claim they are being discriminated against because the state refuses to permit them to hold drivers licenses and the race protections have tended to offer the most protection to minority groups.  As Mr Musk would have anticipated, his comments were quickly responded to by those recalling his asserting after assuming control of the platform the Twitter “believes in free speech” and that earlier in 2023 he’d quietly dropped from the hateful content policy the rule protecting trans people from dead-naming (the act of referring to a transgender person by their birth name, or the name they used prior to their gender transition) and mis-gendering.