[Ads-l] innocent

[Jonathan Lighter]

A slightly different but related sense. (See how easy these are to find?)

2014 Joanna Bellis in _Medium Aevum  LXXXIII 229: It prompts us to
reconsider the assumption with which textual and editorial endeavours often
begin, that the transmission of texts is somehow "innocent", unless special
circumstances suggest otherwise: that the factors implicated in the process
of variation and corruption will most  likely be practical, mechanical, and
disinterested, as opposed to deliberate and strategic.

Or as I would say:

"This should caution us not to assume, as we so often do, that scribal
variations in texts are merely accidental; in fact, they may be quite
intentional, and sometimes tendentious."

J:L

On Wed, Oct 28, 2015 at 4:28 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: innocent
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Wed, Oct 28, 2015 at 2:03 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > I've been reading it for, I'd guess, 20 years or more, so naturally I
> have
> > no exx. to hand...
> >
>
> Well said! I could not have put it better, myself! The inability to predict
> what will be of interest in the future is the bane of the existence of the
> scholar of the random.
>
> --
> -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
>
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