Thread: Language! (words change meaning)

Know all about that Paul.

SWMBO is a pernickety, nit-picking, pedantic fusspot !!


On the subject of fairness and unfairness.

I suppose it is pretty logical to use the term unfairness in the way the boatbuilders do.
If you take fair to be right or true then unfairness is the same thing not right or true, and
this applies to to the boatbuilding situation with regard to the rightness or trueness of
shape, line, measurement etc.

The spell checker on this machine doesn't like trueness.!!!

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30396...-h/30396-h.htm

CLEVER STATESMEN.


However great talents may command the admiration of the world, they do not generally best fit a man for the discharge of social duties. Swift remarks that "Men of great parts are often unfortunate in the management of public business, because they are apt to go out of the common road by the quickness of their imagination. This I once said to my Lord Bolingbroke, and desired he would observe, that the clerk in his office used a sort of ivory knife, with a blunt edge, to divide a sheet of paper, which never failed to cut it even, only by requiring a steady hand; whereas, if he should make one of a sharp penknife, the sharpness would make it go often out of the crease, and disfigure the paper."

Just so Mr.Swift!! ( One of the greatest political satirists ever! )

I remember a certain college of Advanced Education appointment where an eminent
Professor in his field was appointed to the top Job. Made a complete mess of it!! Not
because he was stupid but because of the fact that he was not trained in administration
and was too prone to bright but unworkable ideas. Unworkable because of budgetary
and regulatory constraints.

New word for today ... mordant.

adjective
1.
(especially of humour) having or showing a sharp or critical quality; biting.
"a mordant sense of humour"

noun
1.
a substance, typically an inorganic oxide, that combines with a dye or stain and thereby fixes it in a material.
an adhesive compound for fixing gold leaf.
2.
a corrosive liquid used to etch the lines on a printing plate.

verb
1.
impregnate or treat (a fabric) with a mordant.



"Men acting gregariously are always in extremes; as they are one moment capable of higher courage, so they are liable, the next, to baser depression, and it is often a matter of chance whether numbers shall multiply confidence or discouragement. Nor does deception lead more surely to distrust of men, than self-deception to suspicion of principles. The only faith that wears well and holds its color in all weathers is that which is woven of conviction and set with the sharp mordant of experience.

Enthusiasm is good material for the orator, but the statesman needs something more durable to work in,--must be able to rely on the deliberate reason and consequent firmness of the people, without which that presence of mind, no less essential in times of moral than of material peril, will be wanting at the critical moment."

"Abraham Licoln" - James Russell Lowell