innocent

[David A. Daniel]

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>I'd add this sense as OED 3.c. I've been hearing and reading it for at
least
>a dozen years.

>2000 John H. Arnold _History_ (N.Y.:Sterling, 2009) 100: For [historical
>documents] are not innocent; their voices talk to certain ends, intend
>certain consequences. They are not mirrors of past reality, but events in
>themselves.

>The meaning is "open to simple, straightforward interpretation; free of
>unconscious or unacknowledged motive or intention."

I don't think that is the meaning. I think the meaning is that [historical
documents] are (or can be) tools of an agenda, as if they are a messenger
who has been trained to relay propaganda and make it sound like fact.
DAD


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