dilettante

1863 engraving by Joshua Reynolds of a group portrait of the Society of Dilettanti, c.1778. Seven well-dressed gentlemen arrayed around a table, drinking and discussing artwork that is laid out before them. Pictured, from left to right: Watkins William Wynn; John Taylor (standing); Stephen Payne-Gallwey; William Hamilton; Richard Thompson (standing); Spencer Stanhope (standing); and John Lewin Smyth.

23 May 2022

In present-day speech and writing, dilettante usually refers to someone who unseriously engages in an endeavor, one who treats an art or science as a pastime rather than an object of serious and rigorous study. But the word is an early eighteenth-century borrowing from the Italian dilettante, meaning a lover of the arts, which in turn is from the Latin verb delectare, meaning to take delight or pleasure in. And at first, English usage echoed the positive connotation of the Italian word, but within a century the negative sense had developed. (Cf. amateur)

A group of English nobles and gentlemen founded the Society of Dilettanti c.1734 (the exact date of founding went unrecorded—minutes and records of the society were not kept until 1736). The society consisted of men who had made the “Grand Tour” of the Continent and were enamored with European culture and antiquities, particularly those of Italy. Their goal was to promote an appreciation of that culture in England, including bringing objects of interest back to England. In addition to the word, one of their other legacies is the quantity of looted material in British museums.

The Italian word started appearing in general English writing within a handful of years. John Brevel’s Remarks on Several Parts of Europe used it thusly, the italics denoting that the word had not yet fully anglicized:

In an adjoining Chamber I saw a noble Collection of Antiques, which were a Legacy to the Senate, partly from a Patriarch of Aquileia, of the Grimani Family, (a great Dilettante, who had made large Acquisitions in this way in Greece, and the Levant, as well as in Italy) and partly by a Contarini, of the Number of Procurators.

By the latter half of the eighteenth century dilettante had been fully anglicized, as can be seen by its appearance in a 1781 work by Scottish portraitist Allan Ramsay, who commented on the Riot Act using the penname “A Dilettante in Law and Politics.” (Cf. read the riot act) This use also indicates the word had not yet acquired its negative connotation. In calling himself a dilettante, Ramsay was simply indicating that he was not a professional lawyer, rather a painter who dabbled in law and politics.

But the negative sense of dilettante is in place by the early nineteenth century, as can be seen in this passage from Thomas Carlyle’s 1831 satire Sartor Resartus:

The man who cannot wonder, who does not habitually wonder (and worship), were he President of innumerable Royal Societies, and carried the whole Méchanique Céleste and Hegel’s Philosophy, and epitome of all Laboratories and Observatories with their results, in his single head,—is but a Pair of Spectacles behind which there is no Eye. Let those who have Eyes look through him, then he may be useful.

Thou wilt have no Mystery and Mysticism; wilt walk through thy world by the sunshine of what thou callest Truth, or even by the hand-lamp of what I call Attorney-Logic; and “explain” all, “account” for all, or believe nothing of it?

[...]

“Explain” me all this, or do one of two things: Retire into private places with thy foolish cackle; or, what were better, give it up, and weep, not that the reign of wonder is done, and God’s world all disembellished and prosaic, but that thou hitherto art a Dilettante and sandblind Pedant.

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Sources:

Breval, John. Remarks on Several Parts of Europe, vol. 1. London: H. Lintot, 1738, 215. Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

Carlyle, Thomas. Sartor Resartus. London: Chapman and Hall, 1831, 1.10, 46–47. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Cust, Lionel and Sidney Colvin. History of the Society of Dilettanti. London: Macmillan, 1914, 4–5. Archive.org.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. dilettante, n.

Ramsay, Allan. Observations upon the Riot Act, with an Attempt Towards the Amendment of It. By a Dilettante in Law and Politics. London: T. Cadell, 1781. Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

Image credit: Original painting by Joshua Reynolds, c.1778. Engraving in A Catalogue of the Pictures and Drawings in the National Loan Exhibition. London: William Heinemann, 1909, 12. Archive.org. Public Domain Image.

amateur

The Olympic logo. Five conjoined rings of different colors. The modern Olympic games were conceived as the pinnacle of amateur athletics but have become increasingly populated by professional athletes.

20 May 2022

Amateur is a direct borrowing from the French, which in turn descends from the Latin amator. Both the French and Latin literally mean lover, but both are also often used in the context of a connoisseur of or participant in a particular art or activity. The English word appears in the eighteenth century, and today, amateur is used in many fields but perhaps most frequently in the context of sports.

From the very beginning, English use of amateur has carried the implication of someone who has less skill or knowledge than a professional, that is a somewhat depreciative connotation, if only in a self-deprecating context. We see this in the first known English use of the word, a letter by an anonymous writer using the pseudonym William Freeman from 27 December 1728 (but not published until 1757):

We pass our time very agreeably, you know we are musical people; Clarinda and my Lucinda are both good performers on the harpsichord, and sing in a pleasing manner, Leontes plays the flute in the most perfect taste of the instrument, the good Aristos is our violoncello, and myself with some neighbouring gentlemen are the violins. We make a tolerable concert for Amateurs, and thus entertain ourselves whenever we have the inclination.

And there is this from a 1765 book on gardening by James Justice:

Thus I have given what knowledge I have obtained from experience, (my only guide) of the different soils and composts for the Gardeners, and if properly attended to, with the other directions in the following Piece, I flatter myself I shall be remembered with esteem, and considered by the Amateur an useful Member to Society.

Despite its inclusion of the citation of the Freeman letter, the Oxford English Dictionary dates the depreciative sense from 1767. Clearly, the depreciative connotation is older.

The phrase rank amateur dates to at least 1873. The rank here means utter, absolute, of the worst kind. It first appears in a response to a reader who used the pseudonym “rank amateur” when writing to the British Journal of Photography.

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Sources:

“Answers to Correspondents.” British Journal of Photography, 28 February 1873, 106. ProQuest Trade Journals.

Freeman, William. Letter 13, 27 December 1728. Letters on Several Occasions. London, R. Manby, 1757, 64–65. Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

Justice, James. The British Gardener’s New Director. Dublin: John Exshaw, 1765, xii. Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2021, s.v. amateur, n. and adj.; June 2008, rank, adj. and adv.

Image credit, Pierre de Coubertin, 1913. Public domain image. While the Olympic logo is no longer under copyright, its use as a trademark is restricted.

lend-lease

An M3A1 Stuart tank and part of an A-20 bomber on the deck of a ship bound for the Soviet Union, c.1942.

18 May 2022

[Edit 20 May: corrected the speculation as to why the shift from lease-lend to lend-lease occurred.]

The following appeared in the New York Times on 9 May 2022:

President Biden on Monday signed an updated version of the Lend-Lease Act that supplied Britain and eventually other allies during World War II, summoning the spirit of the last century’s epic battle for democracy as he paved the way for further arms shipments to Ukrainians fighting to repel Russian invaders.

This present-day use of lend-lease to refer to U.S. arms shipments to Ukraine is an excellent example of how the framing of a news story influences its reception and audience. The use of lend-lease to refer to the present conflict frames it as akin to the fight against the Nazis, placing the Ukrainians, and the United States, on the side of the angels in the current conflict. Such articles, while having the pretense of objectivity, are biased as a result of this framing. One can agree with the bias and say that U.S. aid to Ukraine is the right policy, but it is bias, nevertheless. And it is, perhaps, more important to recognize bias when it comes from one’s own side. It’s easier to spot to the biases of one’s opponent’s propaganda than it is one’s own.

Lend-Lease was a World War II-era program under which the United States supplied arms and munitions to allied countries at essentially no cost, allowing the U.S. to become what President Franklin Roosevelt called “the arsenal of democracy” in a 29 December 1940 fireside chat radio broadcast. The pretext behind the policy was that those countries would return the equipment and munitions, or their equivalent, after the war. The total military aid supplied to other nations during the course of the war totaled over $50 billion (approximately $600 billion in today’s dollars), with the bulk of it going to Britain and the Commonwealth countries and to the Soviet Union.

But the phrase lend-lease was initially reversed, lease-lend. This reversed phrase starts appearing in U.S. newspapers in December 1940, in the lead-up to Roosevelt’s fireside chat. One Associated Press report printed in the Atlanta Journal on 18 December reads:

In Congress the first to endorse the “lease-lend” idea were Senator Minton (Indiana), the Democratic whip, and Chairman Bloom (Democrat, New York) of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Minton announced he favored “anything to help Great Britain short of sending an army over there,” and Bloom asserted that “any way the administration can help Britain is all right with me.”

Another AP report appeared the same day in Jersey City’s Jersey Journal and outlines the program more fully:

Before giving an informal exposition of the tentative lease-and-lend plan, the Chief Executive declared that in the present world situation there was absolutely no doubt in the minds of a very overwhelming number of Americans that the best immediate defense of the United States was the success of Great Britain in defending herself.

The President used an illustration to describe the principle behind his plan.

Suppose, he said, that a neighbor’s house caught fire and the Roosevelts owned a long garden hose, which could be used to fight the fire. He would not ask the neighbor to pay him $15 because the hose cost that much, but would be satisfied to get it back after the fire was out. If the hose happened to be damaged, he would remind the neighbor to replace it.

Mr. Roosevelt then said that if this country should lend munitions to Britain, it would get either the munitions back or replacements for them, in the event they were damaged.

This statement made it appear that Mr. Roosevelt was talking in terms of ultimate repayment by Britain in military equipment. Some official sources, however, held that interpretation too narrow, point out that “in kind” repayment might be made just as acceptable in rubber, tin or other raw materials from parts of the British Empire.

But within a few days, the phrase had been reversed to the now familiar lend-lease. Why this shift happened is unknown; the transition from /s/ to /l/ in lease-lend is not a difficult one. Perhaps there was some bureaucratic standardization at play, but that’s speculation. Here is an example of lend-lease from the Albany, New York Times-Union of 22 December 1940:

Therein, these quarters predicted, the Executive will reaffirm his thesis that all aid to Britain is America’s best defense and ask the Congress to implement the policy by swift endorsement of the “lend-lease” method of help.

Lend-lease also became a verb, referring, often humorously, to the program. On 14 March 1941 the New Orleans Times-Picayune ran a headline over a photo that read “Navy ‘Lend-Leases’ a New Fleet.” The photo was in reference to a collection of accurate, scale-model ships that had been given to the U.S. Navy by a model-maker. And New York’s Socialist Call was critical of the program in a 26 July 1941 article with the headline “U.S. Lend-Leases But British Sell.”

A serious, non-headline use of the verb appeared in the Seattle Daily Times on 28 August 1941 in an article that claimed the U.S. Army’s training programs were antiquated and inadequate:

Since the bulk of our new equipment is being lend-leased to the British, with probable extensions in favor of the Russians and Chinese, it makes no sense whatever to have followed this desultory and immature policy of “Squads Right!” and kitchen-police duty.

There is ample excuse for not supplying our new Army with tanks, etc., needed to defend Suez, but there is no excuse for failure to give the new Army training in other appropriate fields of modern war.

How about anti-tank tactics?

Finally, there is this piece using the verb lend-leased that appeared in the British Columbia’s Vancouver Sun on 6 May 1941, another example of bias in framing. Although, I am not sure on which side it is biased. It could be an anti-feminist screed, or it could be poking fun at the patriarchy. From the distance of eighty-odd years, it is hard to tell:

The department for defending the rights of man has another case to protest, and it is in honor bound to keep on protesting until man is set back in his rightful position of authority in this feminist state of society. I recognize that such an ideal is like putting your shirt on a mud horse to win the Calcutta Derby, nevertheless cases of feminine injustice shall not pass while this column has breath left in its body.

The latest comes from Los Angeles, where the healthy old practice of trading your wife to your best friend for a consideration has been reversed. In this case (Brummel vs. Brummel) one Mrs. Lillian Brummel agreed to rent her husband on a year’s lease to one Norma in return for the sum of $10,000. Mrs. Brummel to obtain a Mexican divorce, Mr. Brummel to collect half the proceeds. The whole thing was put up to Mr. Brummel in a spirit of deceptive simplicity.”

“Remember, dear,” said Mrs. Brummel archly, “I am only loaning you for a year!”

Mr. Brummel was a gentleman and he believed her. He lend-leased himself without security, he did not even ask to be allowed to take an option on himself; he walked into the trap blindfold. Now Norma has turned round and divorced him on the hair-splitting pretext that Lillian’s Rio Grande divorce was not legal and Lillian refuses to come through with the 50 per cent.

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Sources:

Associated Press. “Roosevelt’s Aid Plan to Get Early Action.” Atlanta Journal, 18 December 1940, 4. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

———. “U.S. Would ‘Lend’ Aid to Britain.” Jersey Journal (Jersey City, New Jersey), 18 December 1940. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Baird, Irene. “What Really Matters.” Vancouver Sun (British Columbia), 6 May 1941, 4. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Baker, Peter. “Biden Signs Bill to Allow Lending Arms to Ukraine.” New York Times, 9 May 2022.

Franklin, Jay. “Give the Army Boys Modern Equipment and There Will Be No Talk of Law Morale.” Seattle Daily Times, 28 August 1941, 6. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“More Aid to Britain, U.S. Answer to Nazi Threats.” Times-Union (Albany, New York), 22 December 1940, 8-A. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Navy ‘Lend-Leases’ a New Fleet.” Times-Picayune (New Orleans), 14 March 1941, 7. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. lend-lease, n., lease-lend, n.

“U.S. Lend-Leases but British Sell.” Socialist Call (New York), 26 July 1941, 2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Photo credit: Unknown photographer, U.S. government photo, National Archives and Records Administration, National Archives Identifier 197299. Public domain imag

go for broke

Goichi Suehiro of Co. F, 2nd Battalion, 442nd RCT in the Vosges region of France, 1944. A Japanese-American soldier standing in a foxhole, holding an M-1 carbine.

16 May 2022

To go for broke is a verb phrase meaning to risk everything on a venture, to give one’s all. And go for broke is also an adjectival phrase describing such efforts. The underlying metaphor is that of risking bankruptcy. The phrase arose in Hawaiian Pidgin in the early twentieth century and entered into widespread American usage in the 1940s.

Hawaiian Pidgin is creole language, a combination of Hawaiian and English, spoken in Hawai’i by about a million people. According to Ethnologue, it has about 600,000 first-language speakers and another 400,000 second-language speakers, with “vigorous use” by some 100,000–200,000. Its use is not restricted to any specific ethnicity; rather it’s spoken by generally by those raised in Hawai’i. Despite its name, Hawaiian Pidgin is a creole, not technically a pidgin. A pidgin is a contact language with simplified grammar and limited vocabulary, often used to conduct business and trade. A creole, on the other hand, is a full-fledged language, a blending of two or more other languages, with a full grammar and vocabulary and the ability to express an infinite number of ideas. Hawaiian Pidgin is distinct from Hawaiian, which is a Polynesian language spoken in Hawai’i.

The first recorded use of let’s go broke is in a 1935 song title listed in a catalog of copyrighted works. The song is from Hawai’i:

Let’s go for broke; song; with ukulele arr. © July 9 1935; E pub. 49251; Harry Owens, Honolulu. 15930.

A 1937 travelogue of an extended tour of Hawai’i by travel-writer Harry Franck gives a number of snippets of Hawaiian Pidgin, including this one:

A well-known nursery story ends in some circles with, “The gingerbread man he run like hell; he go for broke.”

It appears again the next year in Me Spik English, a 1938 book of examples of Hawaiian Pidgin. In Hawaiian, kane means man and wahine woman:

Kane: “You like go for one walk, huh?”
Wahine: “Too much trobble. I like see one peecture.”
Kane: “We go for broke. We go Hawaii T’eater, see ‘Spoiled Goods.’”
Wahine: “Who de hero?”
Kane: “I tink is no hero. Is maybe educational peecture.”
Wahine: “Educational? Waste time!”

During World War II, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team adopted go for broke as its unit motto, and this is the point at which the phrase starts entering into general American speech. The unit, which served in Europe, was the most highly decorated regiment of the war, including twenty-one Medals of Honor awarded to its soldiers. The 442nd RCT was activated in February 1943 and consisted almost entirely of Japanese-American (Nisei) soldiers. Roughly two-thirds of the soldiers in the unit came from Hawai’i, with the other third coming from the mainland, mainly the west coast. And many of families of those soldiers from the mainland had been interned in relocation camps. (Ironically, Japanese Americans in Hawai’i, those closest to the combat areas, were not interned; because of their numbers, doing so would have been ruinous to the Hawaiian economy.) Go for broke was, therefore, a fitting motto for soldiers who had to go all out to prove their loyalty to their fellow citizens, most of whom viewed them as the enemy.

The adoption of the motto was memorialized in a 14 April 1943 Associated Press article:

As the first trainload unloaded after a 4,000-mile journey via boat and rail, the motto “Go for Broke,” was adopted by those loyal Americans of Japanese ancestry who are taking advantage of an opportunity offered by the War Department for military service against enemies of the United States.

Adjectival use of the phrase appears in print shortly after the war, again in a description of the Nisei valor on the battlefield. From A.W. Lind’s 1946 Hawaii’s Japanese:

The “go for broke” spirit was probably reflected in the bold daring observed among the Islanders on the battle field. Some of the Caucasian officers attributed the apparent unconcern for death among the “Hawaiians” to a Japanese fatalism rather than to an American quality of character. Doubtless there was a certain survival of shikata-ga-nai and of the Japanese sense of obligation (giri). It would be strange if these significant cultural traits of their parents had not retained some influence upon the second generation sons. Preeminent, however, in the gallantry of these sons of Hawaii was the thoroughly American hope that their rights as citizens of the land might be finally established.

So, go for broke is both an etymologically and historically apt term, reflecting both its linguistic and ethnic origins as well as the valor of those who used it.

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Sources:

“442nd Regimental Combat Team.” Go For Broke National Education Center.

Associated Press. “Loyal Japs from Hawaii Reach Dixie to Train.” Atlanta Journal (Georgia), 14 April 1943, 9. (Page number printed on the page is 8 because there are two page 6s.)

Catalog of Copyright Entries, Part 3 Musical Compositions. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1936, no. 15930. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Ethnologue, 2022.

Franck, Harry A. Roaming in Hawaii. New York: Frederick A Stokes, 1937, 146.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2022, s.v. go for broke, v., go-for-broke, adj.

“Hawaiian Pidgin for Beginners.” Languagehat.com, 4 January 2022.

“Hawaii Pidgin.” Ethnologue.com, 2022.

Lind, Andrew W. Hawaii’s Japanese: An Experiment in Democracy. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1946, 167.

Mobley, Milly Lou. Me Spik English: To Help You Remember—Stories of Pidgins in Paradise Heard in Hawaii. Honolulu: Honolulu Star Bulletin, 1938, 17. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2015, s.v. go-for-broke, adj.; second edition, 1989, s.v. broke, adj.

Photo credit: U.S Army, 1944. Public domain image.

state of the art

13 May 2022

A colored etching satirizing the technological advances of the early 19th century. A conglomeration of scenes, such as a steam-powered horse, a suspension bridge between Cape Town and Bengal, and cat food labeled “delicate viands for quadrupeds.”

The phrase state of the art refers to something that incorporates the latest and most sophisticated technology or practice. The phrase as it is commonly used today dates to at least 1815, but there are precursor phrases, and state of the art is a good example of how a collocation of words can become a stock idiom.

We see the collocation of the four words as early as 1692 in Stanford Wolferstan’s An Enquiry into the Causes of Diseases:

The present state of the Art of Physick is just like that of War, both have received considerable Improvements, the one to save, and the other to destroy Mankind.

If we parse this sentence, it’s obvious that the phrase here is not the noun phrase state of the art, but rather that there are two phrases: a noun phrase, present state, and a prepositional phrase, of the Art of Physick. But Wolferstan is using the collocation to refer to technological and practical development.

And several decades later we see the noun phrase state of the art appear. A review of an essay on ancient Mycenean shipbuilding and navigation, as seen in the writing of Homer, in the Annual Register for 1775 has this to say about the technology and techniques of the ancient seafaring:

Agreeably to this account of ancient ships and ship-building, we see, that though Homer’s seamen are expert in their manœuvre, yet they are confined to the precautions of that timid coasting navigation, which is at this day practiced in the Mediterranean, in slight undecked vessels, unfit to resist the open sea. Their first care is, to venture as little as possible out of sight of land, to run along shore, and to be ready to put in, and draw up their ships on the beach, if there is no port, on the first appearance of foul weather.

We find Nestor, Diomedes, and Menelaus, consulting at Lesbos upon a doubt, which this imperfect state of the art alone could suggest. The question was, Whether, in their return to Greece, they should keep the Asiatic coast till they past [sic] Chios, which was the most secure, but the most tedious way home; or venture directly across the open sea, which was the shortest, but the most dangerous?

With the turn of the nineteenth century, we see the collocation of the words appear more often. And these appearances tend to not include references to the continuing development of technology or practices, making the earlier use in reference to Mycenean shipbuilding to be something of an outlier. For example, there is this advertisement for a book in New York’s Evening Post from 17 November 1804:

To this edition Mr. James Barry has added a supplement, containing Anecdotes of the latest and most celebrated Artists, and remarks on the present state of the art of Painting.

Or this advertisement in Philadelphia’s United States Gazette of 7 June 1805:

For the twenty-one large quarto volumes in boards illustrated with five hundred and ninety-five copper-plates, (a number not likely to be soon greatly exceeded in any similar undertaking) which bear honourable testimony to the state of the arts in the United States during the progress of the work: [price list follows].

But the phrase, as opposed to the collocation, remained in use, as can be seen from this account of cloth dying in seventh-century China that appeared in the Washington Expositor of 4 December 1807:

The dying of the Chinese, at an early period, seems to have been confined to Cotton and Silk; the colors, which were extracted from vegetable substances, were generally Red, Blue, Violet, and what is often termed a woad colour: the process being performed by the females in each family. This state of the art seems to have continued until near the end of the seventh Century, when they discarded their own, and borrowed the Indian, and Persian, art of dying, and with it the use of Alum and Coperas.

And in this article on Robert Fulton’s steam engine from Washington, DC’s Daily National Intelligencer of 7 July 1815:

Experiment after experiment had failed, and every additional unsuccessful attempt served to retard rather than to advance to progress of invention. In this state of the art Fulton enlisted in its service, and it was at once carried to the highest degree of perfection.

But the phrase state of the art remained relatively rare until the mid 1950s, when the frequency of its use skyrocketed. This rise corresponds to the technological revolution that followed in the wake of World War II.

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Sources:

“Account of Books for 1775: An Essay on the Original Genius and Writings of Homer.” Annual Register, 1775, 232. ProQuest.

Davies, Mark. Corpus of Historical American English (COHA). Accessed 12 April 2022.

“For the Expositor: A Brief Account of the Origin and Process of Dying.” Washington Expositor and Weekly Register (Washington, DC), 4 December 1807, 1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers. [Database metadata says 5 December.]

Google Books Ngram Viewer. Accessed 12 April 2022.

“New Books” (advertisement). Evening Post (New York), 17 November 1804, 4. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2012, s.v. state-of-the-art, adj, and n., state, n., status, n. and adj.

“Robert Fulton.” Daily National Intelligencer (Washington, DC), 7 July 1815, 2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Thomas Dobson” (advertisement). United States Gazette (Philadelphia), 7 June 1805, 4. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Wolferstan, Stanford. An Enquiry into the Causes of Diseases. London: Thomas Bassett, 1692, sig. A5v. Early English Books Online.

Image credit: Paul Pry (pseudonym of William Heath), 1829. Wellcome Library. Public domain image.