Having the Jones and Partisan Acrimony

The Word Collector — part 16

This is the latest in a series about new words and phrases, specimens collected during expeditions into the literary wilderness, for your general bewilderment, befuddlement, and bemusement, You may know some of these words and phrases already, in which case do feel free revel in my ignorance, which is an untapped resource.

The first few specimens are from the book “End Times — Elites, Counter-elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration” by Peter Turchin which I am wading through with a dictionary as my guide.

Syncretise — a verb meaning to attempt to amalgamate or reconcile differing things, especially religious beliefs, cultural elements, or schools of thought- from “End Times.”.

“Partisan acrimony” — I thought this phrase sums up rather well the sad state of U.S. politics or the Remain vs. Leave camps in the UK’s Brexit fiasco — from “End Times.”

RINO — a derogatory acronym meaning “Republican in name only” which may be already familiar to U.S readers — from “End Times.”

Summa cum laude — Latin — with the highest distinction -from “End Times.”

De jure — Latin– according to rightful entitlement or claim; by right — from “End Times.”

Cui bono- Latin– a principle that probable responsibility for an act or event lies with one having something to gain — from “End Times.”

Mamluk — a member of one of the armies of slaves established during the Abbasid era that later won political control of several Muslim states– from “End Times.”

Plutocracy — a noun meaning government by the wealthy, a state or society governed by the wealthy, or an elite or ruling class whose power derives from their wealth — from “End Times.”

Littoral — an adjective meaning relating to or situated on the shore of the sea or a lake; relating to or denoting the zone of the seashore between high- and low-water marks, or the zone near a lake shore with rooted vegetation. As a noun, it means a region lying along a shore — the littoral zone- from “End Times.”

“To have the jones” for something — this expression had completely passed me by (like so many things) and was in an “Observer” article at the weekend, and I had never come across it before. As it is an American expression it may be more familiar to my Transatlantic friends on Medium. I was particularly intrigued to see the word jones uncapitalised, since Jones is a common surname in the UK.

As a verb, it is slang meaning to have a strong desire or craving for something, sometimes due to addiction. For example: “It’s so hot out that I’ve been jonesing for some ice cream.” Or “……of course you’re jonesing for caffeine — you normally drink three cups of coffee a day.” As a noun, slang for a desire or craving for something. For example, “I gave up smoking this morning, and I’m already having a major jones for a cigarette!”

The origin “Jonesing” is derived from a slang word for heroin addicts, who for some reason were known as “jones.” The term “jones” was first used in the early 1900s. In the 1960s, heroin addicts, dealers, withdrawals, and drug addiction were nicknamed Mr. Jones or jones in New York.

Auteur — this word cropped up in a Guardian article, from the French word meaning author, though quite why the writer had to use the French version is beyond me. Pretentious? Moi?

“Variable change theory” — this phrase was picked up while watching the movie “21” about card-counting at casinos, using the game sometimes called Pontoon. For some reason, I find the film fascinating. It features this phrase, “variable change theory”, which explains a bizarre quirk of statistics sometimes called the “Monty Hall Problem”, after the host of an old TV show called “Let’s Make A Deal”.

The Monty Hall problem is a counter-intuitive statistics puzzle:

• There are 3 doors, behind which are two goats and a car.
• You pick a door (call it door A). You’re hoping for the car of course.
• Monty Hall, the game show host, examines the other doors (B & C) and opens one with a goat. (If both doors have goats, he picks randomly.)

Here’s the game: Do you stick with door A (original guess) or switch to the unopened door? Does it matter? Surprisingly, the odds aren’t 50–50. If you switch doors you’ll win 2/3 of the time! The following links explain further. Having read the explanation several times, I still don’t get it, though the Wikipedia article indicates that I am not alone, and it has tripped up PhD students.

Apologies if you found this explanation goatist, since it assumes you would rather have the car than a goat, and I hope not to get cancelled on Medium as a result.

Rove- a copper nail used in riveting — see in a post on Facebook about someone renovating a boat.

Mie scattering –another expression that has passed me by, sometimes also referred to as a non-molecular scattering or aerosol particle scattering, it takes place in the lower 4,500 m (15,000 ft) of the atmosphere, where many essentially spherical particles with diameters approximately equal to the wavelength of the incident ray may be present. Heard on a BBC Radio 4 report on the Canadian wildfires.

“Waterstones Dad” — this is a new category in the population, a bit like “Mondeo Man” but from a different demographic, first coined in “The New Statesman” by Gavin Jacobson and quoted in “The Observer” this Sunday. Apparently “Waterstones Dad” (named after a popular UK bookshop chain) is from the Boomer generation, likes to read hardback copies of books about meta-theories, like “Sapiens” by Yuval Noah Harari, takes home over £90k a year, and has strong opinions on social issues without getting too radical. “The Observer” article also happens to mention “End Times” as a book he might read, so I may consider myself a Poundland “Waterstones Dad”, with similar interests but on a writer’s income!

I hope you enjoyed this latest collection and do share any favourite new specimens of your own in the comments.

As always, thank you for reading.

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