The word “#trauma” comes from ancient Greek, and until the 19th century it meant a physical injury, a lost limb or damaged body part.
The word earned the definition of “psychic wound” during the #GildedAge and #IndustrialRevolution, as modern society abstracted away labor and suffering via automation and machinery.
It’s never been a disorder.
It’s a symptom of our altered states as we mechanize instruments of production and destruction.
PIG. Sixpence, a sow's baby. Pig-widgeon; a simpleton. Cold pig; a jocular punishment inflicted by the maid seryants, or other females of the house, on persons lying over long in bed: it consists in pulling off all the bed clothes, and leaving them to pig or lie in the cold.
A selection from Francis Grose’s “Dictionary Of The Vulgar Tongue” (1785)
ACT OF PARLIAMENT. A military term for small beer, five pints of which, by an act of parliament, a landlord was formerly obliged to give to each soldier gratis.
A selection from Francis Grose’s “Dictionary Of The Vulgar Tongue” (1785)
The weekend is nearly here and that means (hopefully!) gathering together with loved ones and sharing a meal or a feast. Watch out for the hare though, they are already tucking into the delicious grapes 🍇
BIBLE OATH. Supposed by the vulgar to be more binding than an oath taken on the Testament only, as being the bigger book, and generally containing both the Old and New Testament.
A selection from Francis Grose’s “Dictionary Of The Vulgar Tongue” (1785)
The Forever War: America's Unending Conflict With Itself by Nick Bryant, 2024
The Forever War tells the story of how America’s political polarisation is 250 years in the making, and argues that the roots of its modern-day malaise are to be found in its troubled past.
The return of long-lost Sumero-Akkadian heritage and modern disorders: rediscovering Gilgamesh, Victorian tension, and aftermath
“The rediscovery of the Mesopotamian epic complicated centuries-old and on-going debates about time and history: The major archaeologists of the period utilized it to return the field to its earliest arguments and better understand what time and history meant at the end of the nineteenth century, the Historians, Hebraists, and Biblicists began to question the originality of the Bible and verify its reliability, and figures specialized in literature and/or the arts got access to the primary sources of prehistory to update existing literature or create new fictional arts.”
Olmsted, The Newspaper Axis: Six Press Barons Who Enabled Hitler
“Kathryn Olmsted’s work provides a timely and incisive analysis of four American and two British press lords, united in their isolationism, appeasement towards fascism, and proclivity to use their media apparatus and larger-than-life personalities to forcefully promote their politics.”
“Where do national myths originate? They do not emerge by happenstance. Rather their creation and spread are an exercise of power. Influential historical actors, from antebellum slaveholders to the moguls of Hollywood and those Slotkin calls the ‘political classes’, have attempted to develop and disseminate broadly acceptable myths to serve their own interests.”