The Scam Strikes Back

“I was recently the victim of an on-line scammer.”

A while back I did a piece on the Language of the Email scam. In that article, I offered some advice to the wary internet user of how to avoid being scammed on the social site Linkedin. I’d now like to update some of the information I provided regarding scammers and scam checking sites as I was recently the victim of an on-line scammer myself.

A Marketplace Menace

It all started when my son said he wanted the Lego Millenium Falcon. As any parent will know, that sucker does not come cheap, so my wife went online to hunt for offers. We have both been happy customers of Amazon ever since it started way back just selling books, and we have happily bought from Amazon directly and more recently from Market Place, Amazon’s service that allows third party vendors to sell via the Amazon platform. Looking for the lowest price, my wife came across a seller in Italy called.. well, let’s just say that it was something like a shortened version of Technology merged together with a shorter version of Buyer. The seller had a high rating (4.5 stars) and quite positive reviews (fast delivery, good coms etc..), so my wife placed the order and quickly received a confirmation email of payment along with an estimated delivery time of two weeks via DHL. So far so good. The day of delivery came and, as I’m sure you’ve already guessed, no package arrived. My wife checked the delivery through Amazon’s main portal. It said ‘in transit’, so we decided to wait another day or so. Two days came and went. Something wasn’t right. My wife tried contacting the seller through Amazon only to be met with the message ‘this seller has left Marketplace’. Oh no! We checked the DHL tracking code using DHL’s own portal. There we read that DHL were awaiting delivery of the package to their depot. Oh no!! My wife tried ringing the seller. The number provided went to a generic answerphone message from TIM. Oh s*it! So, my wife phoned DHL. The helpful assistant asked for the tracking number, inserted it in his system, then gave out a weary sigh as if to say ‘not another one.’ He apologised to my wife, explaining that this particular seller had been listing items for months on Amazon, opening a DHL delivery notes once the item was sold, but never sending the package to the DHL delivery centre for processing (a system commonly used by Ebay and Amazon sellers). Basically, our package was never sent. We had been conned.

Attack of the Clone Site

Amazon were really great about refunding us the money. Within an hour or so we had our funds back in our account, but I was feeling ripped off. I kicked myself for not having seen the warning signs. When my wife first found this seller on line, I checked the name to find they also had an on-line shop (kind of like Amazon) from which you could buy the same items. At the time I took this as a guarantee (I should have delved deeper). The seller also had a presence on e-bay ( I should have read the reviews). Basically, I didn’t do my homework. Thankfully, this particular scammer was not the criminal mastermind he (and it was a he) might have thought himself to be. He left a trail that was easy to follow. Back in my original post on the E-mail scam I mentioned that my favorite scam-checking site was scamadviser.com. I have since seen a lot of negative comments about them saying that they use unfair biases to declare sites unsafe. For example, if a site is quite young, it will be unfairly flagged as suspect, which could ruin a start-up’s business before it has even started. In the case of my bogus seller, his site was deemed clean. What Scamadviser did supply me with however was the site owner’s name and address, as they provide information on who registered the domain name. The postal address in question was the same as that on the bogus site; the name was a new bit of information. Armed with this identity and doing a bit of google searching, I found the person in question named in a court case from a few years back in the same town as in the address. He had been involved in a case of check fraud. I even got a mug shot of the guy. So now I had a name, address and even a photo of the guy.

Revenge of the Shopper

I don’t know Amazon’s policy on fraudulent sellers. From what I can see, they kick them off the site, refund the damaged parties, and move on. I, on the other hand, wanted to make sure no-one stumbled into this fake website and entered their credit card details. But who do you turn to? Scam Busters? Well, the first port of call was commissariatodips.it. This is the Italian police’s portal for reporting online crime. You need to create a profile, login, and from there you can report on all sorts of online crime: from Phishing to Cyber bullying. There was no specific option to report fake e-commerce sites, so I reported the site under Phishing sites, as it appeared to be cloning a site from Australia. I guessed flagging the site to the police in anyway possible would be better than nothing. I couldn’t give details about the site, just the links and dates. Next step was to warn people on the web. Scamadviser has the option to leave comments via your facebook profile. My only problem with that is that the world (including the scammer) can see your name and profile photo along with the comment. This might be an intentional deterent to stop people bad-mouthing sites behind the cloak of anonymity, but I was a bit worried the scammer in question might take out a personal vendetta against me (we are in Italy, after all), so I changed my facebook profile name (I now have to wait 30 days to change it back) and changed my profile photo to something anonymous. After that was done, I posted my comment. My hope was that anyone checking up on the site (like I did) would come across this warning message and stay away. Next, I opened a WOT account. “Web of Trust (WOT) is a website reputation and review service that helps people make informed decisions about whether to trust a website or not”, says WOT. It is crowd sourced and comes highly recommended. I checked my bogus website for trustworthyness and found….nothing. I was a bit disappointed, I expected more, so decided to leave my own comment. Step three complete.

A New Hope

I kept an eye on the site for a week or so, checking in to see if there were any changes. One day I decided to make a profile on the site itself using the site owner’s name and entering the email and telephone number of the local police station where the site operator lived as contact details. I hoped this would at least let the site owner know that someone knew who they were and where they lived. I even made the login in password for the site the phrase ‘prison sentence’. Then one day, the site went off line. I was greeted with the satisfying message “This account has been suspended”. I like to think that my efforts helped in some way to close down this site. I can only hope it stays that way. From now on though, I’ll be a little more cautious when I use Amazon Marketplace.

Writing a powerful speech

On the Second of May 2011 the world woke up to the news that Osama bin Laden had been killed by American special forces. A speech was delivered at 11:35 P.M. EDT in the White House by American President Barack Obama.

It seems incredible that this event took place five years ago today after a manhunt that lasted just under ten years. What struck me at the time of the announcement was how finely crafted the speech itself was, and how it was bound to go down in history as one of President Obama’s finest speeches of his presidency. Jon Favreau was Obama’s Director of Speech Writing from 2008 to 2013, having previously worked on the John Kerry election campaign as a speech writer at the ripe old age of 23, and most likely it is Favreau who played a part its writing. whoever was responsible, I hope they got a pay raise that week.

I want to examine parts of the speech in detail, to understand why it is so powerful, and to examine some of the linguistic tricks that speech writers use when communicating monumental news to the nation.

Who killed bin Laden?

Good evening.  Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda, and a terrorist who’s responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women, and children.

If we look at the opening paragraph we can see a single sentence of 46 words. This is very long for a single sentence, and, even if we discount the subordinate clause at the end, we are still left with a main clause of 24 words:

I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden

The first thing to notice is what starts and ends the clause; the pronoun ‘I’ and ‘ killed bin Laden’. If we remove the initial introduction ‘report to the people and the world’, what is being communicated to our subconscious minds is ‘I killed Osama bin Laden’. This is not a coincidental. The use and position of pronouns in this speech is highly deliberate, as we shall see later. Obama knew that this news could be his legacy and needed early on to fix in people’s minds his active role in capturing and killing the man who had evaded his predecessor for his entire presidency. However, this opening statement is carefully worded, making use of what George Lakoff and Mark Johnson call ‘strength of effect’. He says the syntax of the sentence indicates how close two expressions are to each other. The closeness is one of form. In the sentence ‘America killed Osama’ the causation is direct just as the syntax is direct, but in the sentence ‘America conducted an operation that killed Osama’, there is indirect or remote causation, more like cause and effect. This softens the effect while maintaining a causal link. Lakoff and Johnson put it thus, “The closer the form indicating CAUSATION is to the form indicating the EFFECT, the stronger the causal link is.”

Painting the picture

It was nearly 10 years ago that a bright September day was darkened by the worst attack on the American people in our history.  The images of 9/11 are seared into our national memory — hijacked planes cutting through a cloudless September sky; the Twin Towers collapsing to the ground; black smoke billowing up from the Pentagon; the wreckage of Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where the actions of heroic citizens saved even more heartbreak and destruction.

When painting the picture of the September 11th attacks, the writers of the speech use a clever devise: verb tenses. The passive tense is used almost exclusively throughout this section. Why? To detract power from those who perpetrated the attacks. By making these sentences passive, the attackers have been declawed and the listener is left with nothing but the result of their actions. There is only one Active verb tense in the whole paragraph at the very end ‘the actions of heroic citizens saved even more heartbreak and destruction’, and it is no coincident that Obama is at this point describing heroic actions in direct contrast to the ‘cowardly actions’ of the hijackers. Even the building collapsing is described using participles only. Direct heroic action is reserved for the Active Tense.

The use of active and passive sentences to deliver good and bad news is a common linguistic trick and one used in boardrooms around the world. When a CEO stands before the board to report on company losses, which phrase does he reach for? ‘We have made heavy losses this year’, or ‘heavy losses have been made this year’? The passive does not allow for finger pointing. The ‘who’ in ‘who is to blame’ can not be answered in this sentence. Furthermore, when it has been a bumper year, that same CEO will opt for ‘My department has made huge profits this year’ instead of ‘huge profits have been made this year’. This time praise can be heaped on the worthy party. In Obama’s speech a similar technique is used to praise the actions of heroes and draw attention away from the villains.

We can see this continuing in the following paragraph.

And yet we know that the worst images are those that were unseen to the world.  The empty seat at the dinner table.  Children who were forced to grow up without their mother or their father.  Parents who would never know the feeling of their child’s embrace.  Nearly 3,000 citizens taken from us, leaving a gaping hole in our hearts.

Coming together

At this point in the speech, the writers start to make their play. Prior to this news going public, Obama’s approval ratings were around 40%; lower than George Bush’s approval ratings throughout his entire first term in office. It would be an understatement to say that Obama was highly unpopular, and America was starting to fragment along political lines. It was fast starting to look like a divided nation. With this in mind, take note of the use of pronouns in the following excerpt.

On September 11, 2001, in our time of grief, the American people came together.  We offered our neighbors a hand, and we offered the wounded our blood.  We reaffirmed our ties to each other, and our love of community and country.  On that day, no matter where we came from, what God we prayed to, or what race or ethnicity we were, we were united as one American family.

We were also united in our resolve to protect our nation and to bring those who committed this vicious attack to justice.  We quickly learned that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by al Qaeda — an organization headed by Osama bin Laden, which had openly declared war on the United States and was committed to killing innocents in our country and around the globe.  And so we went to war against al Qaeda to protect our citizens, our friends, and our allies.

‘We’ is used in one form or another almost exclusively. The Writers are trying to reignite the memories of America post-911 when Bush’s approval rating spiked at around 90%. Obama is hoping to unite a fragmented nation around a common cause. In fact, unity is expressed in multiple ways throughout the speech; even religious, ethnic and racial unity is invoked. The Writers are at pains to remind the American people of how, in times of need, they (the American people) can come together in solidarity; they can put down their differences to help one and other, and they can rally behind an unpopular leader when the mood is right (prior to 911 Bush had an approval rating of less than 50%). The use of the ‘We’ pronoun carries on into the description of military actions, actively involving the American people in the military successes.

It is worth noting just how useful the pronoun ‘we’ can be for political purposes. ‘We’, at times, could mean ‘us plus you’ (inclusive); at other times it could mean ‘us without you’ (exclusive). This ambiguity is used to great effect, and English is especially good for this. One advantage Tok Pisin  (a pidgin English spoken in Papua/New Guinea) has over most European languages is clusivity; the ability to distinguish between the inclusive and the exclusive first person pronouns. If English had such a distinction, it would render powerless much of this part of the speech.

Over the last 10 years, thanks to the tireless and heroic work of our military and our counterterrorism professionals, we’ve made great strides in that effort.  We’ve disrupted terrorist attacks and strengthened our homeland defense.  In Afghanistan, we removed the Taliban government, which had given bin Laden and al Qaeda safe haven and support.  And around the globe, we worked with our friends and allies to capture or kill scores of al Qaeda terrorists, including several who were a part of the 9/11 plot.

Yet Osama bin Laden avoided capture and escaped across the Afghan border into Pakistan.  Meanwhile, al Qaeda continued to operate from along that border and operate through its affiliates across the world.

It is now that the writers show their hand. Take note of the shift in pronouns.

And so shortly after taking office, I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority of our war against al Qaeda, even as we continued our broader efforts to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat his network.

With subtle ease the Writers have slipped into the first person pronoun; as if to say, while we (you excluding me) were busy chasing shadows across Afghan borders, I was directing the operation that my predecessor could never pull off.

Then, last August, after years of painstaking work by our intelligence community, I was briefed on a possible lead to bin Laden.  It was far from certain, and it took many months to run this thread to ground.  I met repeatedly with my national security team as we developed more information about the possibility that we had located bin Laden hiding within a compound deep inside of Pakistan.  And finally, last week, I determined that we had enough intelligence to take action, and authorized an operation to get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice.

Obama is seen as an active protagonist in all of this. The pronoun I (Obama) is at the head of all three principle clauses in this paragraph. Just as in the speech’s opening, the clever technique of glamour by association is used. You know what I mean; we’ve all done it in one form or another, whether it be name dropping or taking credit for group work; taking credit through association is a common trick, and by placing ourselves in proximity to an interesting party, we make ourselves seem much more interesting. Now, I know Obama doesn’t need to do this (he’s Obama for Christ’s sake), but he does make himself the active protagonist in looking for bin Laden, locating bin Laden and bringing him to justice. And as if this all wasn’t enough, along comes the coup de grace.

Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.  A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability.  No Americans were harmed.  They took care to avoid civilian casualties.  After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.

The Writers take care to open with ‘at my direction’. All that follows is laid squarely on the shoulders of Obama. He takes full responsibility for the actions and outcome. A small team of Americans may have  carried out the operation, but it was at the direction of Obama. Again, the message is rammed home ‘I killed Osama bin Laden’.

Closing with a sense of unity

And tonight, let us think back to the sense of unity that prevailed on 9/11.  I know that it has, at times, frayed.  Yet today’s achievement is a testament to the greatness of our country and the determination of the American people.

The cause of securing our country is not complete.  But tonight, we are once again reminded that America can do whatever we set our mind to.  That is the story of our history, whether it’s the pursuit of prosperity for our people, or the struggle for equality for all our citizens; our commitment to stand up for our values abroad, and our sacrifices to make the world a safer place.

Let us remember that we can do these things not just because of wealth or power, but because of who we are:  one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you.  May God bless you.  And may God bless the United States of America.

Obama’s speech closes with a reaffirmation of unity. It is a plea to the American people to end the bickering and in fighting that had mired much of Obama’s first term in office. He asks the American people to think back to 9/11, in much the same way British politicians try to reawaken memories of the blitz spirit. But was he successful in his aims? After the news, Obama’s approval rating went up to 55% slightly less than the peak of his popularity upon his first election (58%), but quickly slumped thereafter to sub 40% late 2011. It seems that while the killing of Osama may cement his name in history, it does not appear to have been a deciding factor in his re-election in 2012.

 

Smutty Proverbs: Sex and Power

It is hard to seperate sex from power in Italy. After all, this is the country that invented nepotism [coming from the Borgia’s predilection for their cousins – nipote – placing them in positions of power before finally murdering them] and more recently the Italian expression ‘bunga-bunga’ to describe the raunchy parties its ex-Prime Minister is said to have thrown. So, it seems only fitting that I should dedicate a post to some smutty Italian proverbs.

Sicilians must be a romantic lot (sic) if they live by the proverb ‘Comandare é meglio che fottere’ [Lit: It is better to command than to f*ck. Poetically: The pleasures of power are greater than the pleasures of the flesh]. I can only hope that the wives of those power hungry men get their jollies elsewhere. Sadly, this proverb sums up the Italian obsession with power, be it legitimate or enforced, and perhaps explains how a tiny Island at the foot of Italy’s mainland managed to spread its power across the world. Maybe a solution would be to drop several tons of Viagra into the water supply.

The Sicilians are rich territory for fleshy proverbs. The following will require a double translation. First, Sicilian: ‘Chiù longa è a pinsata, chiù grossa è a minchiata’. Next, Italian: ‘Longa pensata, Grossa Minchiata’. Finally, English: ‘The longer the thought, the longer the d*ck’. Now, I know what you are thinking. Where is the insult? However, in Italian D*ck is often used in place of Sh*t in English, so the real meaning is: ‘The longer you consider something, the bigger the problems get’. A rather cruder version of Nike’s ‘Just Do It’

D*cks and C*nts feature richly in the Italian vernacular. The part of Italy I live in seems to be divided into two camps: those who always have a d*ck on their lips and those who drop a c*nt between words. Every other word or exclamation seems to contain these two words; it’s almost as if Italians were obsessed with oral sex or something. One of my students told me that you can tell which side of the river someone comes from depending on which of these words they liberally spice their speech with. And, before you ask, ‘side of the river’ is not a euphemism.

To illustrate this pudendum-ial obsession, another proverb: ‘Tira piu’ un pelo di figa che un carro di buoi’. This literally translates as ‘a c*nt hair pulls more than an oxcart’. If this be true, I would love to see someone try to (dis)prove it on Mythbusters. Sadly, however, the true meaning is ‘the power of sex overcomes all other forces’, which seems to contradict the Sicilian proverb we started with.

I think someone needs to ask Silvio his opinion to get an answer to this one.

Halo

In the study of Fine Art, one of the things often learnt is the origin of iconography and symbols. Some symbols are now so deeply rooted in our cultures that we forget they first appeared in art; we forget that their origins predate the icons. On example of this is the halo, which wonderfully illustrates how we have lost the ability to interprete the many nuanced symbols for the halo that once existed in Western art.

According to my trusted Hall’s Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art, the halo appeared in Christian art around the 4th century.

Its use was first confined to the three persons of the Trinity and the angels, but by degrees was extended to the apostles, saints and others. In the East the halo symbolized power rather than sanctity and it was not unusual for it to be given to Satan in early Byzantine art.

Before the 4th Century the halo was attributed to the sun-gods Mithras, Apollo and Helios,

generally in the form of radiating beams of light and was adopted in images of Roman emperors who were deified.

However, the Halo predates Roman art, in the art of the ancient gods of China and India.

Within Christian art there are many types of halos: Cruciform halo [generally attributed to Christ or the Trinity]; Triangular halo [symbolizing the Trinity]; Square halo [given to living persons both lay and ecclesiastical, including popes, emperors and donors]; Hexagonal halo [given to theological and cardinal virtues and other allegorical figures]; and Circular halo [Virgin Mary, angels and saints] It was the Early Renaissance painters who reduced the circle to the simple ring of gold which we are familiar with today, but it soon fell out of favor and was rarely seen in Post-Renaissance art. By contrast, the Aureole is not a halo but the light that appears to emanate from the whole figure. It is an attribute of Christ and the Virgin Mary.

According to Chambers, halo came into the English language in 1563 via the Spanish ‘halon’, then was later borrowed directly from French as ‘halo’, but it ultimately comes to us from the Latin accusative ‘halò’, which was taken from the Greek ‘hàlòs, meaning disk of the sun or moon. Interestingly, this Greek word is said to have originally meant ‘threshing floor’, possibly due to the circular movement of the oxen as they travelled around said floor. Its eventual meaning of ‘disk of light surrounding a saintly or divine person’s head in English was as late as 1646.

Afterimage

Have you ever wondered how a common term in the English language comes into existence?

In a series of articles, I will chart the origin stories of some common expressions. Today we will follow the origin story of ‘afterimage’. Don’t know what an afterimage is? Well The Oxford English Dictionary has this definition:

“An impression of a vivid image retained by the eye after the stimulus has ceased.”

Or perhaps you prefer this wordy description of a particular type of after-image effect as described by Charles Martel in 1885:

“The eye, after observing one colour for a certain time, having acquires a tendency to see its complementary, and as this tendency is of some duration, it follows, not only that the eyes of the painter, thus modified, cannot see correctly the colour which he had for some time looked at, but also another which might strike them while this modification lasts. So that, conformable to what we know of mixed contrasts, the eye will see, not the colour which strikes him in the second place, but the result of this colour and of the complementary of that first seen.” – Charles Martel.

Still unsure? Well then, try looking at the image of the red circle below for some time. Focus on the black dot in the centre. Keep your eyes focused on the dot for about 30 seconds. Then move you attention to the black dot on the right and you should see a light blue circle appear on the screen. That is an afterimage.

Subjective Visual Phenomena

The Oxford English Dictionary cites the earliest use of the term ‘after-image’ as being 1874. It describes the illusion of seeing an image of something which the observer had previously been looking at after the image is no longer present, “a prolongation or renewal of a sensory experience after the external stimulus has ceased to operate.” It is often classed under the general heading of Subjective Visual Phenomena, sometimes referred to as after-effect, after-experience, after-sensation, visual persistence; covering a range of visual illusions as well as other sensory effects; but before the 1874 date it had previously gone by many other names.

Slowness of Vision

Long before the term ‘after-image’ had come into existence, the phenomenon was being observed by the likes of Aristotle as far back as 330 BC. Between this time and the following 2000 years, reports of this phenomenon were confined to the scattered observations of a few great minds, such as Ptolemy (2nd C. CE) and Ibn al-Haytham (c. 965 – c. 1040 CE). The phenomenon went under numerous names.  Roman philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 4 BC – c. 65 CE), for one, talked of ‘the slowness of vision’ when observing comets as being the reason for their apparent tails. However, from the time of Aristotle up until the 18^th Century, when Issac Newton wrote of ‘phantasms of light’, the phenomena of the after-image was given only passing notice.

Accidental Colours

By the end of the 18^th Century and going into the 19^th,  there was a flurry of activity in all areas of the observational natural sciences, and an explosion of literature exists from this period concerning the phenomena of after-images and colour after-images. The Comte de Buffon (1707–1788), French naturalist and “the father of all thought in natural history in the second half of the 18th century” [Mayr, Ernst 1981], termed them ‘accidental colours’ in his Histoire Naturelle (1749) and was, in the words of M. Chevreul, “the first natural philosopher to treat the  subject with any degree of detail”. Robert Darwin, father of Charles Darwin, spoke of ‘ocular spectra’; Nicolas Malebranche (1638 – 1715), priest and rationalist philosopher, called them ‘vibrating colours’. Most of these early observers were concerned with the effects of positve and negative after-image, but a few of them described the influence of colour after-images on other colours, or what would later be called ‘successive contrast’.

Ocular Spectra

Though Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 – 1832) made some observations such as that in a room with red curtains the shadows will appear blue, these seem to be observations of colour contrast rather than successive contrast. However, in 1794, Robert Darwin wrote in Zoonomia or the Laws of Organic Life (a two-volume medical work by his father Erasmus Darwin), under the title ‘Ocular Spectra’ of direct and reverse spectra, in an experiment in which he placed different coloured pieces of material on larger pieces of coloured material and observed their after-images. He noticed that with certain combinations, the after-image did not follow the pattern he had previously documented for reverse spectra. The phenomenon he called direct spectra is what we now call the positive after-image.

Harmony & Contrast of Colours

It was not until the French chemist Michel Chevreul (1786 – 1889) began work on what was to become The Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Colours (De la loi du contraste simultané des couleurs, published in 1839) that an intense investigation and differentiating of the various optical phenomenon that had been going under all these various names, was made.  Chevreul had in fact previously published much of these findings  in the 11^th Volume of Mémoires de l’Academie, and in an article titled Physical Investigations on Dyeing published in the 1828 edition of the Cavendish Society report.  In it, Chevreul points out that the term ‘accidental colours’ had previously been used to describe a variety of phenomenon and makes the following distinction:

 “Simultaneous contrast of colours includes the phenomena of modification which objects variously coloured seem to undergo in physical composition, and in the depth of tone of their respective colours, when seen at the same time.

Successive contrast of colours includes the phenomena observed when the eyes having looked for some time at one or more coloured objects, perceive, after having ceased to look at them, images of those objects, presenting the colour complementary to that of the actual object.

This distinction also facilitates the understanding of the phenomena which may be called mixed contrast; for the retina having seen a certain colour for some time, has an aptitude to see for a further time the complementary of that colour, as well as any new colour presented by an external object; the sensation perceived being the result of this new colour, and the complementary of the first.”

Chevreul’s book Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Colours marked a pivotal moment in the marrying of the arts and the sciences, pushing forward artists’ understanding of colour.  The Impressionists and Neo-Impressionists were much taken with his work, especially Georges-Pierre Seurat (creator of chromoluminarism and pointillism)  who adopted these theories in his style of applying a limited colour palette of primary colours in small dots called ‘Optical Colour Mixing’.

The Six Laws of Contrast

By the second half of the 19^th Century the ideas of Goethe, Chevreul and others had taken a firm grip on art teaching and books such as Charles Martel’s Principles of Colouring in Painting (1885) and John Gardner Wilkinson (1797 – 1875) On colour A general diffusion of taste among all classes (1858) started appearing for the art practitioner.  Martel categorises the different phenomena in his own six laws of contrasts.  He categorises what Chevreul called mixed contrast as his first law of contrast while the other five laws talk about simultaneous contrast.  Wilkinson also briefly comments on Chevreul and the phenomena of successive contrasts and mixed contrasts. He discusses the phenomena dismissively, saying that not everyone considered the work of Chevreul of such importance. But who now remembers Wilkinson?

It is around this time, 1874, thirteen years after the publication of The Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Colours,  that English psychologist James Sully (1842 – 1923) is said to be the first to use the term ‘after-image’ in Sensation and Intuition: Studies in Psychology and Aesthetics. However…..

Nachbild

It is true that The Oxford English Dictionary cites the earliest use of the term ‘after-image’ as being the 1874 in Sensation and Intuition: Studies in Psychology and Aesthetics by James Sully . It is siad that he was translating a German term, Nachbild, coined by Purkinje in 1823. In most literature, anatomist and physiologist Jan Evangelista Purkinje (1787 – 1869) is attributed with coining the term ‘Nachbild’ which is the progenitor of ‘after-image’; however, I have found that ‘after-image’ did not first enter the written English language via Purkinje but rather his patron, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

 An 1840 English translation of Goethe’s Theory of Colours (originally published 1810) translates “Scheinbild” (apparent/phantom image) as ‘after-image’ and “abklingendes licht”  (fading light) as ‘after-image’.  It is difficult to know if this translation by Charles Lock Eastlake was seen by James Sully, and whether this in turn influenced his translation of Purkinje; and, as nice as it is to speculate on these things, we may never know. One thing is known, however,  Purkinje has gone down in history as the person who coined the expression ‘Nachbild’, and it is Purkinje’s definition that was to supersede all other terms to become the most common way to refer to this visual phenomenon to this day.

Psychology

The flourishing of interest that was being shown for observational studies in all areas of science, including the rapidly advancing science of Psychology, was greatly enhanced by the study of the after image. Shepherd Ivory Franz (1874-1933), the first American doctoral student in psychology of Wilhelm Wundt and generally considered to be the founder of experimental psychology, proclaimed in 1899 that ‘probably no other single phenomenon was so good an example of the growth of experiment and measurement in psychology as the study of the after-image’.

From that first mention by James Sully in 1874 in Sensation and Intuition, the after-image (or afterimage) went on to become the standard term in introductory text-books of psychology in less than 20 years, and it has remained very much a firm fixture in the English Language to this day.

When the fourth negates the third: poetic structures in the Old Testament

There is a poetic devise used in Old Testament writings which uses repetitions of three + one. I will be quoting from the New James Bible, not because I believe it be more correct for these purposes, but because I like the flowery language.  Also, by way of a disclaimer, this will not be a critique of religion, but rather an examination of a poetic devise and its implications for meaning and translation.

Four is never satisfied

 

 “The horseleech had three daughters, dearly loved, but they satisfied her not, and a fourth is not satisfied when you say Enough: the grave, and the woman’s love, and the earth that is not satisfied with water, and the fire that does not say enough.”

Proverbs 30:15-16

In Biblical interpretation, the above line is said to mean that ‘four is never satisfied’, three is enough. However, I have been reading about another possible understanding of this structure; one of supplanting the third with the fourth.

In Proverbs we see a string of three + one structures similar to the one above. Take this passage for example:

 ²¹For three things the earth is disquieted, and for four which it cannot bear: ²²For a servant when he reigneth; and a fool when he is filled with meat; ²³For an odious woman when she is married; and an handmaid that is heir to her mistress. ²⁴There be four things which are little upon the earth, but they are exceeding wise: ²⁵The ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their meat in the summer; ²⁶The conies are but a feeble folk, yet make they their houses in the rocks; ²⁷The locusts have no king, yet go they forth all of them by bands; ²⁸The spider taketh hold with her hands, and is in kings’ palaces. ²⁹There be three things which go well, yea, four are comely in going: ³⁰A lion which is strongest among beasts, and turneth not away for any; ³¹A greyhound; an he goat also; and a king, against whom there is no rising up. ³²If thou hast done foolishly in lifting up thyself, or if thou hast thought evil, lay thine hand upon thy mouth. ³³Surely the churning of milk bringeth forth butter, and the wringing of the nose bringeth forth blood: so the forcing of wrath bringeth forth strife.

This structure of three + a fourth is used in abundance in Proverbs, and there is some argument amongst scholars as to its meaning. Part of the misunderstanding comes from the English translation of these parts. It must be remembered that the original texts from which our English translations come did not contain full-stops, commas, or punctuation; much of that was added to the English text through interpretation, including words such as ‘and’ or ‘or’.  One thing that was understood by those translating the texts  was that a technique was being put to use in these writings to clearly define when subordinate elements followed principle elements by either creating a repetition of words such as above the churning of milk bringeth forth butter, and the wringing of the nose bringeth forth blood: so the forcing of wrath bringeth forth strife; or a repetition of nouns groups: servant, fool, woman, handmaid (all people) versus ants, conies, locusts, spiders.  The repetition of the verb or noun groups unites what could originally be seen as disparate sentences.  If one were to, for example, rewrite a passage from above and disregard the repetition of words one could create a whole new reading.

 If thou hast done foolishly in lifting up thyself, [and] if thou hast thought evil, lay thine hand upon thy mouth. [Some say] the churning of milk bringeth forth butter. [By the way] wringing of the nose [can make it bleed]. [I’ve heard it said] the forcing of wrath [creates] strife.

Written as such, we read them as completely unrelated sentences, but the original interpreters understood that the repetition of the word ‘bringeth’ united the parts, hence, they are contained in one passage and are meant to be read as a unit.

Three + Four or Three – Four?

In the above passage from Proverbs, the grouping of the words is no doubt due to their similarities.

Group 1: a servant, a fool, an odious woman and an handmaid that is heir to her mistress.

Group 2: The ants, the conies, the locusts and the spider.

Group 3: A lion, A greyhound, a goat and a king.

But, for what reason is the fourth word included?

If there is no punctuation, then the fourth element must be included for a purpose. Some say that the emphasis on the fourth is to cancel the previous three; for example “There are three things I don’t understand, Mathematics, Art, Music; [but above all] Religion.”. Others say that the fourth cancels the last of the three thus resulting in a triplet.  “There are three things I don’t understand, Mathematics, Art, Music; no not Music, but Religion.”

There is some sense to the argument or cancellation. This is a devise still used in English literature; trumping a previous word with another.  Just look at the variations on the theme of cancellation in the following:

He was like a friend to me. No not a friend but a brother…

What I am about to detail is merely the result of certain confessions of a friend of mine — no, not a friend either. An acquaintance, say. A casual acquaintance….

….when indignities are perpetrated on him whom he calls his friend, is not a friend but a fiend. …

But they also make him a particular kind of essayist — not an intimate but a reserved figure, not a talker but a writer, not a babbler but a rhetorician, not a companion but a teacher, not a friend but a great chancellor, not a familiar …

Marriage was ordained by the Almighty, instituted in Paradise, was the relief of a natural necessity, and the first blessing from the Lord ; he gave to man not a friend, but a wife, that is, a friend and a wife too (for a good woman is…..

We can see this in Psalms:

Psalm 56:8 (nasb) rief has become so commonplace in my life it almost feels like a companion. No, not a friend, but a companion…

And a less obvious variation can be seen in an epic poem about Baal, the god of the Canaanites.

I have built my mansion of silver, my palace of gold.

It is unlikely that the writer meant that he first built a mansion of silver then a palace of gold. It is more likely that the palace and mansion are one in the same and the supplanting of ‘mansion of silver’ for ‘palace of gold’ is for emphasis.  “I built my mansion, no wait, more like a palace.”, the silver then gold could mean that it was built of both silver and gold or gold not silver.

This suggests that a stylistic connection between these earlier poems and the Hebrew texts might have existed.

Four trumps three

With this idea of trumping in mind let’s look back to the example passage from Proverbs.

For three things the earth is disquieted, and for four which it cannot bear: a servant, a fool, an odious woman, an handmaid that is heir to her mistress.

What is really being said is either “I cannot bear a servant, a fool, an odious woman. No not an odious woman but, an handmaid that is heir to her mistress.”; or “I cannot bear a servant, a fool, an odious woman.  No not wait, none of them what I really can’t bear is an handmaid that is heir to her mistress.”

There be four things which are little upon the earth, but they are exceeding wise: The ants, the conies, the locusts, the spider.

What is really being said is either “There be four things which are little upon the earth, but they are exceeding wise, The ants, the conies, the locusts. No, not the locust but the spider.”; or “There be four things which are little upon the earth, but they are exceeding wise, The ants, the conies, the locusts.  No, none of them, the spider is the wisest.”

There be three things which go well, yea, four are comely in going. A lion, A greyhound, a goat and a king.

What appears to be said is “A lion, a greyhound and a goat go well but a king is proper in going”. Note how different this is if we just read it as a list of four things. “A lion, a greyhound and a goat and a king go properly upon the earth.”

Note below how the Contemporary English Version of the Bible actually favours the second reading over the first.

  ²¹There are three or four things that make the earth tremble and are unbearable:  ²²A slave who becomes king, a fool who eats too much,  ²³a hateful woman who finds a husband, and a slave who takes the place of the woman who owns her. ²⁴On this earth four things are small but very wise:  ²⁵Ants, who seem to be feeble, but store up food all summer long;  ²⁶badgers, who seem to be weak, but live among the rocks;    ²⁷locusts, who have no king, but march like an army;  ²⁸lizards, which can be caught in your hand, but sneak into palaces.  ²⁹Three or four creatures really strut around:    ³⁰Those fearless lions who rule the jungle,  ³¹those proud roosters, those mountain goats, and those rulers who have no enemies. ³²If you are foolishly bragging or planning something evil, then stop it now!  ³³If you churn milk   you get butter; if you pound on your nose, you get blood–   and if you stay angry, you get in trouble.

In the Contemporary English Version all ambiguity is taken away. The parts which originally read three + one are now rewritten to say three or four things.

The standard English Version is closer to the King James Version:

²¹Under three things the earth trembles; under four it cannot bear up: ²²a slave when he becomes king, and a fool when he is filled with food; ²³ an unloved woman when she gets a husband, and a maidservant when she displaces her mistress.

²⁴ Four things on earth are small, but they are exceedingly wise: ²⁵ the ants are a people not strong, yet they provide their food in the summer; ²⁶ the rock badgers are a people not mighty, yet they make their homes in the cliffs; ²⁷the locusts have no king, yet all of them march in rank; ²⁸the lizard you can take in your hands, yet it is in kings’ palaces.

²⁹ Three things are stately in their tread; four are stately in their stride: ³⁰the lion, which is mightiest among beasts and does not turn back before any; ³¹the strutting rooster, the he-goat, and a king whose army is with him.

³²If you have been foolish, exalting yourself, or if you have been devising evil, put your hand on your mouth. ³³For pressing milk produces curds, pressing the nose produces blood, and pressing anger produces strife.

Though not written exactly as such, it appears that the lizard trumps the ant, badger and locust as it lives in the palace of kings. It also seems evident that the king trumps the lion, goat, and rooster as the other three strut where as he strides gracefully.  Does it not make sense that the other collection of fours follow a similar pattern: a maidservant who displaces her mistress trumps a slave-king, a fool after eating and an unloved woman who gets married?

The argument for supplanting the third with the fourth is convincing as a stylistic devise, but I’m more swayed by the idea of the fourth supplanting all three as it explains a number of other things in the Bible. Reading the fourth element as that which trumps the previous three can possibly explain a puzzling element in the story of Samson in Judges.

Threes and Sevens

Samson is a colourful character, reminiscent of Hercules in many ways, and, for this reason, he is often thought to be borrowed from an earlier story or tradition. Unlike the other Judges, he appears not to be a ruler over anyone; he is a womaniser, a fighter and easily fooled by women.  If it were not for the story of his miraculous birth we could be mistaken for thinking he was lifted straight out of the Greek myths.

This aside, the story is also resplendent with threes and sevens. Samson is involved with three women; Timnah, a sister of Timnah (unnamed), and Delilah. At his marriage to Timnah he tells a riddle to thirty groomsmen and offers to give them thirty pieces of fine linen.  They can’t answer the riddle for three days but do so on the seventh [it is always important to note in these texts when there is a statement such as this.  Why is it not said that they couldn’t answer for seven days?  What did they do for the four days before they answered?].  Later he kills thirty Philistines after they have ‘plowed with his heifer’.  Later he attaches torches to three hundred foxes.  Later when Samson is in refuge from the Philistines they demand of 3000 men of Judah to deliver Samson to them…..you get the idea.

One question that many have puzzled over is this one. When Delilah is trying to discover the secret of Samson’s superhuman strength he tells her four ways to overcome him, three are a lie but the fourth is true.  How does Delilah know that the fourth is true?

1: Bind me with seven fresh bowstrings.

2: Bind me with new ropes

3: Bind him with his own seven locks of hair

4: Cut off his seven locks of hair

The first three times she tries to bind him the Philistines lay in hiding but are not discovered. It’s as if they are not sure if he has told Delilah the truth.  It is not until the fourth that Delilah sends for the armies of Philistine to pay her for her work and this time they do not lay in hiding.  Delilah, in fact, says “Come up once more, for he has told me all his heart.”  Now, how does she know it’s not just another trick?  Why do the men not lay in wait or even wait to pay her, for they come with money in hand?  Could it not be that in the poetic literature the fourth trumps the three, thus it must be the truth? There is also a pay off in the verbs used.  Bind is repeated three times.  Three times types of binding implements are mentioned.  The fourth verb is cut.  It stands out from the repetition of the previous lines like a beacon.

The stylistic use of a thrice repeated word or concept is used to punctuate a fourth.  This could either point to some stylistic devise used by a variety of cultures and/or indicate that the stories original form may, as many scholars have put forth, have been in a form of song/poem, and not written down until much later.  If this were the case the repetition of similar words, themes and elements could have originally served a purpose in the singing of the song, only to later be written down and altered for subsequent generations brought up on spoken word.

 The Song of Deborah

There is a strong argument for the idea that parts of the Bible originally existed in song or poetic form only and were later transcribed to written narratives for later generations. There is evidence in the Bible itself for this theory.  Deborah, the only female Judge mentioned in the Book of Judges, has two versions of her story; one in poetic form (the Song of Deborah), the other in a more narrative form.  The song of Deborah is often thought to date from as early as the 8^th C BC and is accepted as predating the more narrative form.  But, the narrative form comes before the poetic in order of the Bible, so why is this considered a later version?

Look at the passage when Deborah kills Sisera:

Judges 4:

 ¹⁹ Then he said to her, “Please give me a little water to drink, for I am thirsty.” So she opened a jug of milk, gave him a drink, and covered him. ²⁰ And he said to her, “Stand at the door of the tent, and if any man comes and inquires of you, and says, ‘Is there any man here?’ you shall say, ‘No.’” ²¹ Then Jael, Heber’s wife, took a tent peg and took a hammer in her hand, and went softly to him and drove the peg into his temple, and it went down into the ground; for he was fast asleep and weary. So he died. ²² And then, as Barak pursued Sisera, Jael came out to meet him, and said to him, “Come, I will show you the man whom you seek.” And when he went into her tent, there lay Sisera, dead with the peg in his temple.

And the same incident in poetic form:

Judeges 5:

24 Most blessed among women is Jael,       The wife of Heber the Kenite;       Blessed is she among women in tents.

²⁵ He asked for water, she gave milk;       She brought out cream in a lordly bowl.

²⁶ She stretched her hand to the tent peg,       Her right hand to the workmen’s hammer;       She pounded Sisera, she pierced his head,       She split and struck through his temple.

²⁷ At her feet he sank, he fell, he lay still;       At her feet he sank, he fell;       Where he sank, there he fell dead.

Note that in this version Sisera falls to the ground, which means he was standing. In the previous version he is laying down and has his head nailed to the floor. There seems to be a discrepancy here. There is a strong argument to suggest that the version in Judges 4 is a later rewrite which has mistakenly misinterpreted the poetic form.

The entire poem of Deborah is full of triplets; three names in a row, three repeated themes, which bears a strong resemblance to Greek poems. Keep in mind that the translation may have lost the vocal similarities between names and words, thus losing any relationship that may have existed in the original vocalization of the sounds.  A reconstruction of the First Temple Period Hebrew vocalization can be found here where it’s possible to see the phonetic metre employed in the Song of Deborah.

This aside, taking the short section from the Song of Deborah above, consider what I have previously said about supplanting.

25: water, milk, cream : in a bowl.

26: tent peg, hammer : temple

It seems clear in line 25 that there is some trumping going on. What seems to be said is, “he asked for water, she gave milk; no not milk but cream.”

It has been equally argued that line 26 also contains this structure. The original text doesn’t actually specify a tent peg and hammer but is closer to ‘a stick/piece of wood’ then ‘a club/larger piece of wood’, it’s thought that later translators altered the meaning to tent peg and hammer to fit with Deborah’s image as a ‘blessed woman of tents’, but read in the spirit of trumping it could equally mean ‘She reached for a stick, no it was more like a club and struck him in the temple.’ (note that in the reconstructed pronunciation the lines finishing with ‘head’ and ‘temple’ finish with the same phonetic sound).  This fits with the fact that he is said to fall.  If she strikes a tent peg into his temple (surely a tricky thing to do standing) and fastens his head to the ground, how does he manage to fall?

It appears that the narrative version has not interpreted the poetic version in the spirit of supplanting structures and has taken them literally. The narrative form does not mention water, then milk then cream, but goes straight for milk.  It also takes as fact that she picked up two objects in her hand with which to strike Sisera and since Deborah is a ‘tent woman’, it is rewritten to be a tent peg and hammer.

As with so much of ancient interpretation, much is speculation, but healthy speculation is always a good thing in my (good) book.

It’s a dog’s life!

What do we have against dogs? Even the Beatles seemed down on dogs when they sang ‘It’s been a hard day’s night and I’ve been working like a dog.’

English contains many animal metaphors, often in the form of a simile. For those of you unsure as to what a simile is, it is a common figure of speech in which two different things are compared to each other often using the terms ‘like’ (e.g. the the Beatles song) or ‘as’ (e.g. He’s as lazy as a dog).

Similes often differ between cultures. In English we are ‘as good as gold’ whereas in Italian we are ‘as good as bread’ [buono come il pane]. In English we can say someone is ‘crazy like a fox’ whereas in Italian they are ‘outside [crazy] like a balcony’ [fuori come un balcone]. One thing that both languages seem to agree on though is that dogs have it bad. ‘It’s a dog’s life’ [vita da cane] means the same in English as an Italian….a shitty life. However, Italian has one metaphor beyond English.

_______

When I catch sight of the sports updates on the TV news in Italy, I often despair at the interviews with the coaches from the premier League teams. As in Britain, they are hardly inspirational, speaking in monotones and empty sound-bites, but there is one character who always stands out. Antonio Conte, ex-player for the national side and now coach of the Italian national team, always has such a pained look in on his face during interviews. You can see from the photo below, he looks like a new-born passing his first solids:

In 2012, while coach for Juventus, he was investigated for match-fixing allegations and what then followed was a long process of trial by press. I remember at one point he almost openly declared that if HE went down, he was going to take everyone with him. During those difficult years press interviews were rough and his expression perfectly opitimised the Italian expression ‘avere l’aspetto di un cane bastonato’. This roughly translates as ‘looking like a dog that’s been beaten with a stick’. Seeing as in that period he seemed to be the fall guy for the entire Italian football association, one might be able to sympathize.

Incredibly, after all these scandals Conte was made the coach of the Italian national side. One might conclude that it was because through all the news coverage he kept his mouth shut; or to put it another way, ‘non ha sputtato il rospo’ [lit. he didn’t spit out the toad]. In English we have our own version – ‘he didn’t let the cat out the bag’.

Of course, one of the biggest mysteries is, how he managed to grow that glorious head of head of hair when he was already losing it in his early career [just take a look below]. Perhaps he implanted the hair from a black Alsatian to go with that ‘hang-dog’ look.

 

Something to Blow your Mind

Every now and then you have a revelation that really blows your mind, and just such an event happened the other day when I was wondering if church ‘spires’ could be in some way be derived from ‘inspiration’ and, if so, was the ‘in’ in ‘inspire’ a prefix [spoiler alter: they aren’t, and it isn’t]. Here is what the wonderful etymology dictionary on-line says:

mid-14c., enspiren, “to fill (the mind, heart, etc., with grace, etc.);” also “to prompt or induce (someone to do something),” from Old French enspirer (13c.), from Latin inspirare “blow into, breathe upon,” figuratively “inspire, excite, inflame,” from in- “in” + spirare “to breathe”.

Breathing inspiration into lifeless things is not a new idea. Famously, Aphrodites breathed life into the statue of a maiden for King Pygmalion, and there are earlier examples in ancient Egypt where there was a ceremony called the ‘opening of the mouth’ in which the ‘breath of life’ was allowed to enter the body of a mummy. The breath was seen as the missing element needed for life; after all, a body lacking breath becomes inanimate, and the heart ceases to pump; thus, the missing element must be the breath.  In the Pyramid Texts Isis is represented conveying the breath of life to Osiris by “causing a wind with her wings“, and the god Ptah created man by modelling his form in clay before breathing life into him.

Another story of a statue coming to life is mentioned in the book of Revelations when the statue of a Beast is given breath by another. This reminds me of one of my favourite creepy religion myths, that of the Golem. In Jewish folklore a golem was an animated amorphous being, created entirely from inanimate matter, usually clay or stone, that would do the bidding of its creator. It was a mindless and souless creation that was completely at the mercy of its creator.

The above image is from the film “Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam” 1920

In the Talmud, the earliest form of Adam was a Golem (oh yes, there was more than one Adam) and was moulded from mud. This Golem was unable to speak and was thus returned to dust.  These early Jewish writings gave rise to a belief that one could create their own golem through a form of spell making, an idea represented in a number of Frankenstein-esque films with ‘The Golem’ in their titles – check out IMDB.

So where does this get us? We now know the origins of the word inspire. It means to literally ‘blow your mind’, but we can also add to our word-cache ‘aspire’. If inspire is to fan the flames, aspire is to be the flame itself.

Aspire – “strive for,” c. 1400, from Old French aspirer “aspire to” (12c.), from Latin aspirare “to breathe upon, blow upon, to breathe,” also, in transferred senses, “to be favorable to, to endeavor to obtain, to reach to, to seek to reach; infuse,” from ad- “to” + spirare “to breathe”.

So, by endeavouring you can be the Golem or by inspiring you can be the Rabbi; you can be Isis or Osiris; and you can be Aphrodites or the statue. All you have to do is put your lips together and blow. [yeah, I know that was cheesy]

Oh! And as for the church spire? Turns out, the Church ‘spire’ has nothing in common with inspiration, but comes from another root….quite literally. In Old English a ‘spir’ was a sprout, shoot, spike or tapering stalk of grass coming from Proto-Germanic *spiraz. The meaning of “tapering top of a tower or steeple” is said to have first been recorded 1590s (a sense attested in Middle Low German since late 14c.). [or so says my etymology dictionary]

To be at the Fruit!

I remember my first Christmas in Italy. Not being used to the myriad of courses that my Italian family serves up over the three-day eatathon that is Natale, I took too many second helpings of the exquisite first course (in this part of Italy it’s usually pasta filled with ricotta and spinach Mmmmmm!) and forgot to leave room for the second course, dessert & post-dessert snacking; so by the time I got to the sweet, I was sweating with the strain of trying to get one more bite of panettone down my gullet. Images of Monty-Python and the “waffer-thin mint” were going through my head when suddenly, seeing my dilema, my mother-in-law  turned to me and said, “Sei alla frutta”, and I, not understanding what she meant, thought she was calling me a fruit. Such is the curse of idioms.

Idioms tell us much about the culture of a nation. Britain’s numerous nautical idioms speak of its seafaring history while Italy’s numerous food related idioms speak of a culture in love with cusine. We have everything from the easily comprehensible ‘non è pane per i miei denti’ (not bread for my teeth), which the Brits might empathize more with if it were tea, to the more suggestive ‘qualcosa bolle in pentola’  (something is boiling in the pot) when there might be trouble brewing. We have the logical ‘non tutte le ciambelle escono col buco’  (not all the ciambelle come out with holes, a ciambella generally being shaped like a ring) to the abrupt ‘capita a fagiolo (occurs at the bean) when something happens at exactly the right moment. This derives from a time when beans were an essential and common part of the diet of many poor Italians, so to ‘capitare a fagiolo’ was to turn up just in time for a probably much-needed meal.

Another staple of Italian diets is wine, and we are not short of an idiom or two here. We have the complimentary ‘botte piccola fa vino buono’ (a small cask makes good wine) when good things come in small human packages to the bawdy ‘avere la botte piena e la moglie ubriaca’ (to have the wine cask full and the wife drunk) while the Brits just have a cake to eat.

In Italy, food and drink can also explain your position of power. A ‘lava-lattuga’  (a lettuce washer) is a useless worker where as ‘avere le mani in pasta’ (having your hands in the pasta) means you have power to influence someone else’s decisions, to be powerful. Just as in English too many cooks spoil the broth (troppi cuochi guastano la minestra Lit.too many cooks add flavour to the minestroni), once that broth is spoiled, you’d better eat it because in Italian ‘o mangiar questa minestra o saltar questa finestra’ (either eat this soup or jump out this window) actually means ‘take it or leave it’. Then again, in Italy ‘tutto fa brodo’ (everything makes the broth) or as we say in Britain, ‘every little helps’.

So I guess now we really are ‘at the fruit’ (essere alla frutta) which means to be finished or to have had enough, referring to the Italian tradition of eating fruit at the end of the meal.

 

 

Silly Season

In Britain, The Silly Season is that time of year when Parliament is not in session and the newspapers, devoid of any real news, start reporting B-list trivia as if it were A-list material.

Silly

The word ‘silly’ in the English Language is one of those rare examples of a word which has transformed through multiplicities of meaning.  If you take a look at an etymology dictionary you will see the following:

“happy” to “blessed” to “pious,” to “innocent” (c. 1200), to “harmless,” to “pitiable” (late 13c.), “weak” (c. 1300), to “feeble in mind, lacking in reason, foolish” (1570s).

So, why has this word transformed through such diametrically different meanings?

Is the man who is silly happy?

The origins of this word lie in the Latin cognate solari. Anyone with a passing knowledge of Latin or Italian will probably recognise this word. In modern Italian the word ‘solare’ is used to describe a ‘happy’ person, perhaps even a ‘happy go lucky’ person. A closer translation of the Latin ‘solari’ might be ‘blessed’ or ‘lucky’. Our modern English happy originally had this meaning “lucky, favoured by fortune, being in advantageous circumstances, prosperous”, before going on to mean pleased and content. However, ‘happy’ does not enter the written language until around the 14th Century; and it was this word that supplanted an older word gesælig from Old English, which inevitably went on to form our modern silly.

So why did gesælig (silly) go from meaning ‘blessed’ to ‘foolish’?

An enlightened man is a silly man

One story I have read is the following. In the days before Christianity spread across Europe, earlier forms of Earth and Sky worship were practised. These earlier religions were commonplace. The Romans themselves practised a form of ‘sun’ worship in Sol Invictus. The Egyptians worshiped Ra, who travelled in a Solar Barge. In Germanic mythology, the Sun was a female deity; this is the reason why the German word for ‘sun’ (sonne) is female whereas it is male in most other European Languages; and there are numerous examples in Nordic Bronze Age culture of sun worship.

A person who was ‘sun-blessed’ was a fortunate person. Obviously, this held more weight than our modern idea of ‘sun-kissed tomatoes’. To be silly was to literally be blessed by god. To be blessed by the ‘sun god’. Thus, a blessed person is a lucky person.  This old form of sun worship was the religion of the masses. However, it was soon to come under attack from the advance of a new, more ‘sophisticated’ religion. Christianity.

Whatever the origins of Christianity, the spread of the religion was mainly thanks to the Roman Empire.  The Romans, with their city ways and sophisticated beliefs, spread the new religion of the metropolis to the backwaters of the rural countryside, and it is here that we start to see the shift in meaning.

The happy fool

A sophisticated city gent with his newfangled city religion would consider the country beliefs as a little bit naive. That ‘silly’ man who was once considered ‘blessed’ or even ‘pious’ was now looked upon as a happy fool, perhaps even pitiable for believing in such simple ways. Obviously, Christianity was not immediately accepted by all over-night, and it would have been in these intermediary years that the ‘silly’ man was seen as a harmless fool to the city folk.

As time wore on, however, and Christianity became the common belief of the masses, those that still clung to the old ways of worshipping the sun would have gone from ‘innocent’ fools, to ‘pitiable’ dolts, ‘weak of mind’ and unable to adapt to the ways of society. The ‘silly’ man was no longer simply clinging to the old ways, but he would have been veritably backwards in his thinking. Anyone who would cling to such an outmoded form of worship was obviously lacking in reason; hence, we arrive at the modern meaning of ‘silly’.

Something to think about the next time Silly Season comes along.