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Silence is a dangerous game, and words are dangerous too
Yesterday's entry about commonplace books was inspired by The Calendar's word, quotationipotent.
The Calendar's compiler clearly thinks in a similar way to me, because today's word is commonplace-book.
Formerly "book of common places." A book in which "commonplaces" or passages important for reference were collected, usually under general heads; hence, a book in which one records passages or matters to be especially remembered or referred to, with or without arrangement [1500s-1800s]..... Commonplace, to enter in a commonplace-book.
- Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1893
Commonplace was a term used in old rhetoric to represent testimonies or pithy sentences of good authors which might be used for strengthening or adorning a discourse.
- Albert Hyamson's Dictionary of English Phrases, 1922
Like I say, not all of these Forgotten Words from The Calendar are completely forgotten. At least, not by me.
Last night, I came across another of those examples of language evolving in a confusing manner.
I was talking on the phone to Felix about an essay he'd written on Dicey's theory of parliamentary sovereignty. Let no one say I don't live a vibrant rock'n'roll existence.
Felix was citing a passage from Dicey's 1908 text, which said approximately "X, Y and Z touch not remotely on the matter in hand". I queried his citation, since he seemed to be using it to support the relevance of X, Y and Z.
There was a brief panic, before we worked it out. If you read the text surrounding the quote, it became obvious that Dicey thought X, Y and Z were relevant. And thinking about it, yes, that was quite a Victorian mode of expression: they touch not remotely, that is to say they touch very closely.
Today, of course, we use the phrase "not remotely" with a silent "even". If they touch not remotely, then they touch not at all.
Which led to a problem. In the essay, it wasn't realistic to quote the entire passage from Dicey's writing. The sentence Felix had lifted out was clearly the "quotable" one. Yet to a modern reader it is clearly misleading. To include a short explanation of the use of the phrase "not remotely" in early twentieth century Britain would jar with the rest of the essay, and potentially seem patronising. To cite the phrase as "X, Y and Z touch [closely] on the matter" looks, frankly, extremely suspicious - and to anyone checking the citations, it might look at first glance like a blatant falsification.
Having established this was a knotty issue, I obligingly left Felix to deal with it himself. I'm curious to know how he decided to resolve it.
The Calendar's compiler clearly thinks in a similar way to me, because today's word is commonplace-book.
Formerly "book of common places." A book in which "commonplaces" or passages important for reference were collected, usually under general heads; hence, a book in which one records passages or matters to be especially remembered or referred to, with or without arrangement [1500s-1800s]..... Commonplace, to enter in a commonplace-book.
- Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1893
Commonplace was a term used in old rhetoric to represent testimonies or pithy sentences of good authors which might be used for strengthening or adorning a discourse.
- Albert Hyamson's Dictionary of English Phrases, 1922
Like I say, not all of these Forgotten Words from The Calendar are completely forgotten. At least, not by me.
Last night, I came across another of those examples of language evolving in a confusing manner.
I was talking on the phone to Felix about an essay he'd written on Dicey's theory of parliamentary sovereignty. Let no one say I don't live a vibrant rock'n'roll existence.
Felix was citing a passage from Dicey's 1908 text, which said approximately "X, Y and Z touch not remotely on the matter in hand". I queried his citation, since he seemed to be using it to support the relevance of X, Y and Z.
There was a brief panic, before we worked it out. If you read the text surrounding the quote, it became obvious that Dicey thought X, Y and Z were relevant. And thinking about it, yes, that was quite a Victorian mode of expression: they touch not remotely, that is to say they touch very closely.
Today, of course, we use the phrase "not remotely" with a silent "even". If they touch not remotely, then they touch not at all.
Which led to a problem. In the essay, it wasn't realistic to quote the entire passage from Dicey's writing. The sentence Felix had lifted out was clearly the "quotable" one. Yet to a modern reader it is clearly misleading. To include a short explanation of the use of the phrase "not remotely" in early twentieth century Britain would jar with the rest of the essay, and potentially seem patronising. To cite the phrase as "X, Y and Z touch [closely] on the matter" looks, frankly, extremely suspicious - and to anyone checking the citations, it might look at first glance like a blatant falsification.
Having established this was a knotty issue, I obligingly left Felix to deal with it himself. I'm curious to know how he decided to resolve it.
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That's interesting: I've always wondered why a phrase which was so clearly bollocks got so entrenched in the language.
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esoterized
And just when I was about to post something recalling an advert for a hotel somewhere that described a client being "not a little impressed" in the same way. I thought at first it meant he didn't rate the place but then it occurred to me that an advertiser wouldn't knowingly put in copy that said the place a load of thingy.
Re: esoterized
Hmm. I've no idea if it is a word - but I don't like it much.
However, I did notice that Wimble's first iteration of his comment used the word "esotericed", which is better. "esotericked" would have been better still.
I dunno what prompted the change. I know that Wimble has access to the OED online, though, so may have to dismally assume that esoterized is in some way correct :(
Re: esoterized
Wouldn't the OED favour esoterise, if it had the word at all?
Re: esoterized
Re: esoterized
1. OED prefers -ize
2. I have learnized something today, and one should learnize something new every day.
Re: esoterized
Re: esoterized
I was deriving from:
I'll confess that my formal grammer is ropey, as I've not had to deal with it since secondary school. So that'd be some variety of participle or other?
However, I wouldn't expect its correctness (or otherwise) to have much bearing on whether I'm allowed to use it or not. Just how much defense I can put up against accusations :-)
And I'd only use esotericked against somebody who insisted on referring to "magick". Horrible variation :(
Re: esoterized
Although 'magick' is seldom (never ?) used as a synonym for 'magic'.
Re: esoterized
The problem with that is that "Real ProgrammersTM" are displaying an inherent sense of humour about their terminology. Whereas people who are talking about "real magick" are simply (in my opinion) being pretentious.
Oooh, ooh. Real Vampires, next!
Re: esoterized
You mean Vampyres.
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'scuse, while I go find a box to put my cynicism back in.
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This is what footnotes are for:
"Touch not remotely, which is to say closely[1].
[1]Victorian english says that "not remotely" means closely."
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That and replacing &mbsp; with !
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Good point, well made :)
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That's what I'd want to do, but if my self-control were to crumble, then I'd expect my editor to stop me.
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