My word of the whole month really. Apply to whichever politician you want, there are plenty of deserving choices.
Its meaning - fossilised turd.
Every picture tells a story, writers tell a different story
Sunday 24 February 2019
Monday 4 February 2019
Decimate - Word of the Day
I do get perturbed by certain words, but I get far more perturbed when people use words which they don't seem to know the meaning of. The word 'decimate' doesn't mean to destroy or to devastate, it means to reduce by one in ten. Please tell the TV news journalists - all of them.
Before anyone starts, let me just say yes, I agree that the English language changes, of course it does. And online dictionaries are starting to say that decimate means to devastate or to destroy. I just want to know what's wrong with the words devastate and destroy? Their meanings are not quite the same so to use one or other of those would be more precise, but decimate has become a favourite word in the news media, where precision is seldom their objective. A punishment for a rebellion in the Roman army was to decimate, literally to kill one in ten of the soldiers.
"A cohort (roughly 480 soldiers) selected for punishment by decimation was divided into groups of ten. Each group drew lots (sortition), and the soldier on whom the lot of the shortest straw fell was executed by his nine comrades, often by stoning, clubbing, or stabbing. The remaining soldiers were often given rations of barley instead of wheat (the latter being the standard soldier's diet) for a few days, and required to bivouac outside the fortified security of the camp.[3] As the punishment fell by lot, all soldiers in a group sentenced to decimation were potentially liable for execution, regardless of individual degrees of fault, rank, or distinction." Wikipedia
Wikipedia, yes I know. But is that any less likely to be correct on this particular issue that any other encyclopedia or dictionary? Every academic/expert writing entries in any of those had a position they wished to take, how does that differ from the enthusiasts who contribute to Wikipedia? I haven't the enthusiasm to delve deep into the original history of the Roman military.
Anyhow I can't read Latin.
Anyhow I can't read Latin.
Sunday 3 February 2019
King Solomon's Carpet by Barbara Vine - Book review
A great story, very well written and increasingly tense and unpredictable, one of Barbara Vine's darkest creations. A feeling of impending catastrophe grows as the story's convolutions wind and wander.
There are a dozen or so characters, all misfits in their own way, but who is the protagonist, the main character? Is it Jarvis, the obsessive railway enthusiast who is writing a history of the London Underground? Is it the poor little rich girl who goes on the tube for the first time in her life and loses her wedding dress? Is it Alice, a talented violinist, fleeing her loveless marriage to Mike? Or maybe it's young Jasper who's careless mother Tina lets him skive off school and ride the underground with his friends? Or Jed, who owns a demented hawk, or Tom the busker with delusions of grandeur, or Axel the dangerous stranger who has a dancing bear. Maybe it's Jasper's grandmother Cecelia, who is in love with her best friend.
Some of these people are more unhinged than others. They and others live in or visit a ramshackle former school where a former headmaster had hanged himself with the bell-rope. By the end of the story his is not the only death.
The main character is actually the London Underground, a surface section of which the garden of the old school backs onto. The presence of the tube permeates the entire novel, the people are all bit players by comparison, their stories depend on it.
Set in around 1980, the book seems somehow old fashioned for that era, the writing style and characters don't feel quite modern enough. But then it was published in 1990 and the author was born in 1930, so it's not so surprising. The faint scent of quaintness doesn't detract from the obsessive grip the story has on its characters, or the reader.
There are a dozen or so characters, all misfits in their own way, but who is the protagonist, the main character? Is it Jarvis, the obsessive railway enthusiast who is writing a history of the London Underground? Is it the poor little rich girl who goes on the tube for the first time in her life and loses her wedding dress? Is it Alice, a talented violinist, fleeing her loveless marriage to Mike? Or maybe it's young Jasper who's careless mother Tina lets him skive off school and ride the underground with his friends? Or Jed, who owns a demented hawk, or Tom the busker with delusions of grandeur, or Axel the dangerous stranger who has a dancing bear. Maybe it's Jasper's grandmother Cecelia, who is in love with her best friend.
Some of these people are more unhinged than others. They and others live in or visit a ramshackle former school where a former headmaster had hanged himself with the bell-rope. By the end of the story his is not the only death.
The main character is actually the London Underground, a surface section of which the garden of the old school backs onto. The presence of the tube permeates the entire novel, the people are all bit players by comparison, their stories depend on it.
Set in around 1980, the book seems somehow old fashioned for that era, the writing style and characters don't feel quite modern enough. But then it was published in 1990 and the author was born in 1930, so it's not so surprising. The faint scent of quaintness doesn't detract from the obsessive grip the story has on its characters, or the reader.
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