I've just been reading a book from 1900, and it contains this sentence: "Vivid memories of those days survive, coloured by Bible stories, conned and repeated, and the prints and the chromos which were a part of the familiar apparatus."
Let's put aside the interesting word "chromo", which presumably means colour illustration. I'm interested in the phrase "conned and repeated".
You probably know the archaic meaning of 'con', in this context. It meant to learn by rote, to swot up on, to cram. But why has it ceased to be use in this sense? Why does any word or term cease to be used?
I mean, think about it. Hundreds of millions of people are speaking English every day, and using it to describe any number of ideas and activities and events. Shouldn't every possible resource be drawn upon repeatedly, in that great babble? Isn't that what you'd expect?
Was it perhaps the pejorative meaning of con, as in "to swindle, to trick", that made people back away from using it in the other sense?
But how does that explain all the other archaic terms that just disappear? (I think the one I lament the most might be "brown study": "I fell into a brown study", that is, a reverie.)
A little further on in the book, I came across another word that has fallen out of use: "collegian". There seems no earthly reason why that one should have disappeared, or all but disappeared.
Every time you open your mouth you are shaping the language. Think about that! (Unless, of course, you are opening it to put a doughnut inside, an operation of which I heartily approve.)
where i usually end up when i think about this (and i do think about it a lot) is wondering how many shades of meaning we are likely missing, and will never recover, from old texts. they were inserted there by the authors, but there are no footnotes. which is why so many passages from the bible, for example, seem so utterly mysterious, not in a mystical sort of way, but in a 'what the hell' sort of way. as do attempts by theologians to explain them. and even the theologians themselves may have been referring to things we no longer have context for. and so on. a big game of broken telephone that continues and will never be fixed, unless by ever new creative interpretation.
ReplyDelete.Laeth
Apparently this ancient Sumerian joke has been baffling people recently. (Mal, not logged in.)
DeleteI'm glad someone else thinks about this!
I'm OK with old texts being cryptic, though.
*except (not unless)
ReplyDelete.Laeth