[ExI] wordplay for a tuesday morning

[spike]

From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Tara Maya
Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2014 3:02 PM
To: ExI chat list
Subject: Re: [ExI] wordplay for a tuesday morning

 

Apparently the legal doublets in English date back to the centuries right after the Norman conquest, when, in order to be sure your listener understood you, one had to use both an English word and a French or Latin term.  

 

Some examples that will be familiar: "aid and abet" "over and above" "part and parcel" "terms and conditions" "free and clear" "hue and cry" and on and on… Tara Maya

 

 

 

OK Tara, well we can deal.  

 

Suppose there was a war and the POWs were to be given medical attention.  The doctors patched up their wounds and they all healed, and now there was nothing more to do, but the doctors are humanitarian sorts and so they decided to give all the POWs free prostate exams.  They were lending aid and discomfort to the enemy.

 

They didn’t need to do that; they went above and behind the call of duty.

 

Afterwards the doctors went to play golf.  They strove to make par; their performance was over and below.

 

One of the POW patients was suicidal, and they chose to aid, to not abet her actions.

 

One of the POWs committed a bunch of crimes in the prison camp, rape, murder of other POWs, that sort of thing, so after the war, they didn’t know if they should press criminal charges or just send him back.  That he was free was not clear.

 

There were people on both sides of the debate on what to do.  If it went one way, one group would cry.  If the other, the opposing group would hue.

 

What to do?  They decided to compromise by meeting one group’s terms while satisfying the other group’s conditions.

 

That way each got some but neither got all; the one group got part and the other, parcel.

 

 

Is this like the old days, or what?

 

{8^D

 

spike

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