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AWADmail Issue 427A Weekly Compendium of Feedback on the Words in A.Word.A.Day and Tidbits about Words and Language
From: Judy Stiles (stilesj tessco.com) Interesting to learn the real meaning of this phrase, my daughter manages a lingerie shop by this name in NYC, so we use this phrase often in my home. When I tell people what company she works for, I recommend that they not open the website on their work computer!
From: Allan Forsyth (aerofan262 aol.com)
Now is the time to understand / That all your ideas of right and wrong /
Were just a child's training wheels / To be laid aside / When you finally
live / With veracity / And love. -Hafez, poet (1315-1390)
Somehow I doubt that Hafez wrote about "a child's training wheels" in the fourteenth century. This calls to mind a French expression, to add to those in this week's selections: Traduire c'est trahir, meaning "To translate is to betray."
Many readers questioned the anachronism "training wheel" in those lines
when bicycle itself was invented hundreds of years after the poet. These
lines were a "translation" by Daniel Ladinsky (who does not speak Persian)
in his book The Gift.
It turns out these lines are not translation at all, but renderings inspired
by Hafez. There's no analogue to Ladinsky's lines in the original Persian
poetry of Hafez.
Learn more in the reviews of the book.
-Anu Garg
From: Lynne Glasscoe (lynne.glasscoe gmail.com)
"Stanislav Beranek was critical over the creation of the role of agent
provocateur, who will seek to provoke artificial situations in which
someone will accept a bribe." Cillian O'Donoghue; New Pandur Purchase Inquiry Launched; The Prague Post (Czech Republic); Jul 21, 2010. I was amused that the usage for agent provacateur was gleaned from an article in a Czech journal written by what appears to be an Irishman. What does this tell us? That other nationalities using the English language are more comfortable with its nuances?
From: Claude Généreux (cgenereux cupe.ca) Subject: decolletage Def: A low neckline on a woman's dress. Marie-Antoinette and Jacobins both enjoyed decolletage, but for different and opposite reasons, to the point that the queen lost her head.
From: Claude Hubert (claude75020 free.fr) In French décolletéé is the shape of a woman's dress which reveals her cleavage. Décolletage means cutting a metal bar to make screws and bolts. For many years it was the main industry in remote alpine places.
From: Tommy Lupo (wolf1069 aol.com) It was interesting to see the quotation for the word "decolletage" mention the censoring of movies in Saudi Arabia. A few years ago, while working in Riyadh, I bought the Special Edition for the movie "300". There were two discs, and the first was censored. The second one with the bonus features, however, was not, so most of the scenes that had been deleted were viewable.
From: Lawrence Crumb (lcrumb uoregon.edu) I am reminded of the limerick:
A coed from dear old Bryn Mawr
Committed a dreadful faux pas: She loosened a stay In her décolleté, Exposing her je ne sais quoi.
From: Michael D. McMullen (lawyerinsc aol.com) I appreciated more than usual your invitation to "Explore decolletage in the Visual Thesaurus".
From: Craig Dolder (craig dolder.us) Thank you for clarifying a lyric from my favorite musical, Les Misérables. In the wedding chorale a quatrain is sung:
I forget where we met Was it not at the Chateau Lafarge Where the duke did that puke Down the Duchess's decolletage? I had always inferred the meaning through contextual clues and never thought to search out the proper definition. Though my assumption was close, it's nice to know the true definition.
From: Thierry Larrivée (thierry_larrivee yahoo.com)
Under "MEANING:" you write: "noun: A thing accomplished: a done deal." Strange enough, I have a bottle of "Fait accompli" (Westbrook Wine Farm, in the Sierra Nevada Foothills of eastern Madera County, CA) and was wondering, last night, why they had chosen this name. I went on their website and could see they had made the same "nuance mistake"...
From: Suze Salom (herfinaldraft comcast.net) This week, an inheritance for which I have been waiting for years finally came through. When I saw fait accompli in my inbox, I had to appreciate the synchronicity.
From: Charles Alverson (chas eunet.rs) Your definition of infant terrible left out an (perhaps the) important element: youth. Orson Welles was an infant terrible, but he got over it.
From: Cal Audrain (acaudrain sbcglobal.net) Faux is used in architecture to describe materials that are fabricated and painted to look like more expensive materials, typically walls painted to look like they are made of real stone. At the Art Institute of Chicago, when the Grand Staircase was built 100 years ago, the work was never completed according to the plans. Parts of the stairs were made from real marble, parts were made of concrete and plaster and then painted to look like the marble. Likewise, the surrounding walls of brick were plastered and painted and an arcade with columns that was to surround the second floor was finished on only the West side and the egg and dart moulding faded into a plaster blob. The most interesting part was that the bottom five feet of one wall was actually covered with marble, but then, when the plastered walls were painted as faux marble, they also painted the real marble so you would not see the difference. You can visit today and see if you can tell which is real and which is faux.
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Translation is the art of erasing oneself in order to speak in another's
voice. -David Cole, professor, author, and correspondent (b. 1958)
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