The New York Times - December 14, 1986
William Safire

No plans is a good example. If the postvaricator has every intention of making a trip but does not yet want to announce it, he or she seizes on this locution.

Assume that you, the postvaricator, have penciled the trip in on your calendar and have checked out the best restaurants at your destination. Because you have not yet bought the tickets, made the reservations or caused a flurry of cables to fly back and forth, you can truthfully say - with a straight face but a crooked smile playing on your lips - that you have "no plans."

"I have no plan to resign," said Secretary of State George P. Shultz, soon after the revelation of the secret Iran arms trading, which had been pursued against his better judgment. In fact, he had been giving active consideration to resigning, and was careful not to say, "I will not resign," or the more colloquially definitive "Resign? Not me!"

At that tense moment, just before the bombshell announcement of possible criminality in the White House basement, a tug-of-war was going on over control of our arms policy toward Iran. In a verbal straddle, President Reagan announced he had "absolutely no plans" to ship more arms to Iran; despite the absolutely, this no-plans escape hatch left him an opening to ship more arms at some future time. Accomplished postvaricators know that the one locution to avoid is a declarative sentence like "We will ship no more," if that's what you may do one day.

Not until the revelation of the diversion of Iranian arms funds to the contras did no plans disappear both from Secretary Shultz's statements on resigning and from the President's policy statements on arms shipments. President Reagan prevailed on Mr. Shultz to announce without equivocation his intent to stay. At that point, the Secretary of State abandoned the postvaricative no plans and put out the word that he would stay until the end of the Administration.

Meanwhile, however, Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter had been announcing from the basement of the White House, "I have no plans to resign." Soon after, in classic postvaricative fashion, he bailed out, as the embarrassed national security adviser must have suspected he was fated to do.

The Department of State has long been the foremost exponent of no-planning, which is in no way connected with planlessness; some of the most adept no-plans statements come from the Policy Planning Staff.

In an area only remotely related to the Iranian no-planning, Richard W. Murphy, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern (formerly Middle Eastern) and South Asian Affairs, said about the Syrians: "We have no plans to consider further sanctions." That was a double postvarication: if sanctions move to the front diplomatic burner, the verb to consider offers a second buffer, as we adopt "plans to consider" sanctions - that is, we do not actively consider them.

Asked if he was soon going to the region, Mr. Murphy told a House Subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East (the House has no plans to consider changing "Middle East" to "Near East"), "I don't have any plans to go." Then, in a sudden surge of candor frowned on by his colleagues, the Assistant Secretary blurted, "But then I never seem to have plans."

Students of postvarication are always alert to a refinement in their lingo. When "I have no plans to go" changes to "I have no present plans to go," they rush home to pack their bags; and when the official takes the final step, "I have no immediate plans to go," experienced reporters hustle across the street to grab a toothbrush and a razor because the official's plane is warming up on the runway.

Surgeon General's

Warning C. EVERETT KOOP, SUR-geon General of the United States Public Health Service, recently issued a report on AIDS that contained some straight talk and used a word ordinarily avoided in polite conversation. For good reason, the word condom is no longer taboo.

In the section dealing with ways to protect yourself from infection, Dr. Koop wrote to all those engaged in what he termed high-risk sexual activities: "If you jointly decide to have sex, you must protect your partner by always using a rubber (condom). . . ." In a press conference, he added, "The best protection against infection right now - barring abstinence - is use of a condom."

New York City's Health Commissioner, Stephen C. Joseph, promptly said, "The day of the condom has returned." A spokesman for the National Academy of Sciences was described in The New York Times as calling for "a large-scale campaign in the news media, in education and by public health groups to warn people, in explicit, understandable language, to protect themselves against AIDS by using condoms."

In a conflict between public health and genteel language, health cannot lose. Since readers must get used to the word in print and everyday parlance, this department will deal forthrightly with its etymology.

Francis Grose, editor of the 1785 "A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue," attributed the invention of the prophylactic or contraceptive sheath to a "Colonel Cundum" of the royal guards of Charles II, who ruled England from 1660 to 1685. Subsequent dictionaries picked up Mr. Grose's etymology, and Eric Partridge cited a 1667 work by the courtiers Rochester, Roscommon and Dorset entitled "A Panegyric upon Cundum." However, the Oxford English Dictionary supplement disputes this with a peremptory "Origin unknown," adding, "no 18th-century physician named Condom or Conton has been traced though a doctor so named is often said to be the inventor of the sheath."

My guess is that the word is more frequently pronounced cundum and more frequently spelled condom; as the spelling is seen in print more often, the pronunciation will probably be affected. The synonym rubber is often used - Surgeon General Koop used both words, seemingly interchangeably, in his statement - but not all condoms are made of latex-based rubber; the material for many is animal membrane, such as sheep's gut.

"Take your rubbers" is a phrase that can lead to some confusion, meaning "it looks like rain" or "you'll need erasers" or "don't forget your condoms." Because the term rubbers more often denotes coverings for the feet in rainy weather, the formerly taboo word may predominate as the name of the protective genital sheath. Other synonyms or euphemisms -French letters (called in return by the French capotes anglaises, "English cloaks"), safes, circular protectors, etc. - are likely to fade as condom gains acceptance.

Although "Colonel Cundum" remains a shadowy or even legendary figure in history, etymologists can be certain that condom is not a shortening of condominium. That word originally meant "joint rule" or "shared sovereignty," and is still used in that sense by geostrategists (Zbigniew Brzezinski's coinage) in describing overlapping spheres of influence. In the early 1960's, condominium came to mean "ownership of a single apartment rather than a share in the whole building," based on the sense in Roman law of joint ownership of the same property with individual rights of disposal; its clipped form is condo, to distinguish it from the other possible shortening.

On an unrelated matter, but attached to my file on this subject, is a cigarette ad with a little white box saying: "SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Quitting Smoking Now Greatly Reduces Serious Risks to Your Health."

Get with it, Dr. Koop: that's no warning.

861214
NYT861214