"thankless" = marked by ingratitude?

[David A. Daniel]

Yeah, this is just dumb. What she means is "the crimes were all the worse in
that they demonstrated a lack of thankfulness..." That is, the Sodomites
should have been thankful to the lord for all they had, and should have
behaved themselves in such a way as to show their thankfulness, but they
didn’t. (But then, of course not; they were sodomites, after all.) (heh)
DAD


____________________________________________
Palin's book on Amazon. It says: “People who bought this book
 well, people
who bought this book had never bought a book before."

-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
Jonathan Lighter
Sent: Saturday, November 14, 2009 4:33 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: "thankless" = marked by ingratitude?

---

Cf. OED def. 1. How can "crimes" be thankless (in the usu. sense)?

2008 Susan Neiman _Moral Clarity_ (Orlando, Fla.: Harcourt) 2: Sodom's
crimes were all the worse for being thankless, for the city was showered
with wealth....Yet blessed with such abundance, the Sodomites only
dread that they might have to share it.

Prof. Neiman has taught at Yale and is director of the Einstein Forum.

JL

--
"There You Go Again...Using Reason on the Planet of the Duck-Billed
Platypus"

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