Re: the can of worms is truly open revisited

["Patricia M. Godfrey" PriscaMG@xxxxxxxx]

Wolfgang Bechstein wrote:
"Richard Henderson"  wrote:


You know, I think Wolfgang's earlier remark is the key here:
≪I know many citizens of various countries with a very tenuous grasp of
the respective
country's dominant language≫
As an editor I have often found colleagues who thought there was
something "wrong" with a phrase that was perfectly normal and
commonplace to me. It depends on what one has read. There are
subdialects within any language. Some examples from English:
A fellow editor thought "under a cloud" had to have "of suspicion"
tacked on. (One "under a cloud" is rather more than suspect.) Same chap
was utterly flummoxed by the phrases "ascend a river" and "treat with
the Indians." Never heard them, hadn't a guess what they might mean.
A while back someone wrote, and to my annoyance my professional
association picked up and reprinted (with permission of course), a piece
on the quaint English spoken by East Indians. As examples he cited
"balderdash" (which had occurred on this list just that week; and not
from me), "sans" for "without" ("went out sans coat and hat"; that one
goes back to Shakespeare--"sans teeth, sans eyes, sans everything"),
"tomfoolery," and "bilge."
Then there was the bird book that spoke of a hawk "stooping upon its
lunch." I objected to the juxtaposition of the technical "stoop" (the
term in the medieval art of falconry) and the modern "lunch" as jarring
with each other. But no one to whom I have ever mentioned the incident
has ever heard of hawks stooping upon their prey, though Kipling used
the phrase in a poem. I suspect that Wolfgang has read more and older
books than those who insist on the jelly donut recension.

Patricia M. Godfrey