"long" and "bigness" in 1694

[Lynne Murphy]

For 'bigness', I'd read 'boldness' here. (And for 'long', I'd read 'from
point to base'.)

Lynne

--On den 2 september 2010 11:57 -0400 "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
wrote:

> At 9/2/2010 11:21 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>
>> Sounds like its just a way of saying "two inches high and not backed
>> or elaborated with snazzy embroidery that might distract the eye from the
>> fatal letter."
>>
>> Most pictures of Hester Prynne show a giant letter A. Tsk.
>
> Hawthorne incorrectly describes the letter as "each limb proved to be
> precisely three inches and a quarter in length".
>
> I am not up to estimating the angle of the legs of a capital letter
> A, nor using the trigonometric functions to determine the
> "length".  Except for an angle of 45 degrees:  In that shape,
> Hawthorne's letter would be 2.3 inches "long" (and "of a
> bigness").  This being the shortest "length" possible for the
> triangle, Hawthorne's could not possibly have been "of two inches long".
>
> In the probably more acute form of an A, the "length"would be
> slightly more than 2.3 inches.  But of course never as long as 3 1/4
> inches.  How big are the "giant letter[s] A"?  (Jon, you don't need to
> answer.)
>
> I don't imagine we have any illustrations of persons sentenced to
> wear an I for incest, although I am aware of three such cases.  (In
> the 18th century; two males, one female.  And the cases of wearing a
> cloth A -- five -- were also in the 18th century; three males and
> five females were so sentenced.)
>
> Joel



Dr M Lynne Murphy
Senior Lecturer in Linguistics
Director of English Language and Linguistics
School of English
Arts B348
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QN

phone: +44-(0)1273-678844
http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com

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