More careless lexical baloney

Jonathan Lighter wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM
Fri May 23 18:04:57 UTC 2014


> OTOH, you have to give props to Liz's intern for doing such a thorough job
WRT the necessary research.

LMAO on many different levels, some of them mirthless!

But what Jay obviously meant to say was that  Sophocles used  those words
according to a recent American version of _Ajax_ popular in military
circles.

The ev:

https://improbablefictions.wordpress.com/tag/sophocles/

"[Brian] Doerries reinforces this framing by utilizing military language in
his translation, including more contemporary phrases such as:
'affirmative,' 'death parade,' 'death march,' 'report to me immediately,'
'shell-shocked,' and 'thousand-yard stare.'"

And

"Doerries argues that 'ancient Greek drama appears to have become an
elaborate ritual aimed at helping warriors prepare for battle and return to
civilian life, during a century that saw eighty years of war.' ”

That must make "Agamemnon" a kind of cautionary tale, but, hey, I'm not the
expert.

JL


On Fri, May 23, 2014 at 1:15 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: More careless lexical baloney
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Fri, May 23, 2014 at 9:35 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com
> >wrote:
>
> > retired Lt. Col. Jay Kopelman
>
>
> No wonder that he was "riffed" into retirement instead of being promoted to
> "full bird"! He's crazy!
>
> OTOH, you have to give props to Liz's intern for doing such a thorough job
> WRT the necessary research.
> --
> -Wilson
> -----
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -Mark Twain
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



-- 
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