nostalgia

I’ve always thought this sounds a bit like a medical condition (oh dear, I’ve got a nasty case of nostalgia) and it turns out, I’m right – although it isn’t anything contagious. As you of course know, nostalgia is a noun (person, place or thing) that describes a sentimental longing or affection for the past.

The word itself hasn’t actually been around for all that long. It was coined by a Swiss physician named Johannes Hofer in the late 17th century (1688, to be specific). He used it to describe a medical condition observed in Swiss mercenaries. These mercenaries were a powerful infantry force made up of professional soldiers who served in foreign armies from the late Middle Ages into the Renaissance. Their proven battlefield capabilities made them sought-after troops-for-hire, especially among the military forces of the kings of France. The Swiss Constitution of 1874 banned the recruitment of Swiss citizens by foreign states, and these days there’s only one Swiss mercenary unit left – the nattily-dressed Swiss Guard at the Vatican.

Despite all this military success, when they were fighting away from home, Swiss mercenaries all got terribly homesick (bless them), pining for their beautiful Swiss landscapes. This was the medical condition that Hofer observed – symptoms were thought to include fainting, high fever and even death. Cases were so serious, and led to so many desertions, illnesses and deaths, that the mercenaries were banned from singing the ‘Kuhreihen’, a melody traditionally played by Swiss alpine herdsman as they drove their cattle to or from pasture, in case it pushed the mercenaries over the figurative edge.

After seeing all this extreme homesickness, Hofer combined two Greek words to describe it: ‘nostos’, meaning ‘homecoming’ (the word ‘nostos’ also refers to a theme used in Ancient Greek literature when an epic hero returns home, usually by sea) and ‘álgos’ meaning ‘pain’.

For many centuries, nostalgia was considered a debilitating and potentially fatal medical condition. But by the 1850s, it began to lose its status as a disease, and this meaning had almost completely vanished by the 1870s (although it was still recognised as such in both the First and Second World Wars, mainly by the American armed forces). Nowadays nostalgia is seen as an emotion rather than a condition – a yearning for the ‘good old days’, even if they actually often weren’t that great.

bletting

Some fruits, particularly sloes and medlars (more on those later), can be a bit sour to eat, even when they’re ripe (due to high levels of tannins). And that’s where our word of the week comes in – to make them more edible, we blet them. This basically means letting them go past fully ripe to the point where they’re just starting to break down, but aren’t quite rotting yet. Yum.

There seems to be quite an art to bletting – let it go too long and obviously the fruit’s too minging to eat. Don’t do it enough and it’ll be too bitter to enjoy. Having said that, it’s a fairly hands-off process, and mainly involves storing fruit at room temperature then looking at it every now and again. There seems to be some poking involved as well.

Etymology-wise, we can trace ‘blet’ back to the Old English word ‘blætt’ or ‘blǣtt’, that was used to describe anything a bit squishy or soft.

Four medlars, in all their bummy glory (photo © Andrew Dunn, 1 October 2005).

One fruit that’s inedible before bletting is the medlar, which you possibly haven’t heard of. Medlars were actually very popular here in Blighty a few hundred years ago. They go back even further than that as well – the medlar tree comes from Persia, and ye olde Greeks and Romans grew them too. They possibly fell out of favour because a perfectly bletted medlar is brown and squishy to the point that you might think it’s going to collapse in your hand. Doesn’t sound terribly appetising, does it?

Medlars also aren’t the most attractive of fruits – in fact, in France they’re called ‘cul de chien’ which translates as ‘dog’s arse’. Shakespeare called them ‘open-arse’ in Romeo and Juliet (which paints a lovely picture), and DH Lawrence referred to them as ‘autumnal excrementa’ (‘autumn shit’) in his poem ‘Medlars and Sorb-Apples’. That ode starts with these delightful lines:

‘I love you, rotten,

Delicious rottenness.’

Despite all this bad press, the much-maligned medlar is making a bit of a comeback. Medlar jelly is apparently lovely with a bit of cheese, and you can buy it online. Go on, treat yourself to some autumnal poop. You know you want to.

mascot

When you hear the word ‘mascot’, you probably think of someone dressed in an oversized costume running about at a sports event posing for pictures and hugging people. But in fact, the word ‘mascot’ has quite a sinister history, rooted in black magic and witches. OOOH.

Okay, I might have overegged the pudding ever so slightly. The word ‘mascot’ dates back to the 19th century, and comes from the French word ‘mascotte’, which was used to describe a lucky charm, talisman or magical object. This in turn came from ‘masco’, a Provençal (a dialect of southern France) term for a sorceress or witch. That probably comes from the Old Provençal word ‘masca’, meaning ‘mask’ or ‘spectre’. In the late 19th century, we started using the term to refer to a person, animal or object that brought luck or represents a group, like a sports team.

Sports team mascots are often chosen based on symbolism, characteristics or qualities that are supposed to bring positive energy or success. But sometimes they’re just downright scary. Take Kingsley, who represents Partick Thistle, a professional football club from Glasgow, and looks like a squashed sun with the cold dead eyes of a killer. He was designed by Turner Prize-nominated artist David Shrigley and was unveiled in 2015 to coincide with Thistle’s new sponsorship from investment firm Kingsford Capital Management. Reactions to Kingsley varied from ‘Lisa Simpson on meth’ to ‘the haggard face of the Teletubbies’ sun baby’. Kingsley also has the dubious honour of being the only mascot ever to earn a review from the Guardian’s art critic Jonathan Jones, who compared him to the monsters painted and sculpted by the surrealist Joan Miró. It obviously hit home as well, with Kingsley’s web page on the Partick Thistle site reading as follows:

‘There were a lot of mean things said about me when I first appeared, but I’m not too concerned because I know it’s what’s on the inside that counts. I’m a nice guy really – just a bit misunderstood … I might look a bit angry but I’m really very approachable and I love Partick Thistle. So don’t be scared to come and say hello if you see me out and about.’

Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?

WT actual F

physiognotrace

A physiognotrace is a machine used to automate the production of silhouette portraits. Previously an artist would cut these out by hand. Although this was actually very quick to do, the demand for these types of portrait in the 1700s was so great that a Frenchman named Gilles-Louis Chrétien invented the physiognotrace (also spelled without the ‘g’) to speed things up even more.

Your subject would sit in profile and the physiognotrace used a pantograph (a metal arm made up of pivoted levers) to transmit the tracing to an engraving needle via an eyepiece. This made it easy to produce multiple copies, as well as aquatints, which are much more detailed portraits. The physiognotrace is considered a precursor to the camera, as it allowed artists to reproduce someone’s likeness in a fairly short space of time.

Physiognotrace is a portmanteau, i.e. two words smooshed together, of ‘physiognomy’ and ‘trace’ (you probably don’t need to be Susie Dent to figure that out).

Before photography, silhouette portraits were the cheapest way to record someone’s appearance. They’re named after Étienne de Silhouette, a French finance minister who was forced to impose austerity measures on France during the Seven Years’ War. Obviously no one liked that, and therefore him, so it wasn’t long before his name became synonymous with anything done on the cheap, including these little portraits, where it stuck.

Here’s a physiognotrace in action (accompanied by some very calming music).

A portrait made by a physiognotrace

I’d know that silhouette anywhere

ennui

Photo by Jen Theodore on Unsplash.

We’re probably all feeling some ennui at the moment. It’s a French word for being a bit bored and listless. Because it’s French, in my head it involves lots of languid fanning of one’s own face while sighing and lolling about on a chaise longue. And turns out that’s not far wrong.

Ennui comes from an Old French word, enui, meaning ‘annoyance’. That comes from the Latin ‘in odio’ which means ‘hatred’. At some point ‘enui’ gained an extra ‘n’, and became popular in the 18th century to describe the boredom felt by French youth, who were disappointed that the French Revolution hadn’t been as revolutionary as they’d hoped. This left them full of existential angst, AKA ennui. The meaning morphed again a century or so later, becoming a word expressing a dissatisfaction with the modern age and industrialisation. Lots of arty-farty types suffered from ennui at this time, poor lambs, and because of this it was seen as a mark of how clever you were – because the bourgeoisie were far too stupid to worry about important things like the futility of human existence.

The German version of ennui is ‘Weltschmerz’, which literally translates as ‘world pain’. The difference between the German and French versions is the whole listlessness thing – the Germans are just sad, without all the lying around. I guess they’re just too efficient for that #nationalstereotypes