I forgot to write you yesterday.
Eleemosynary? Are you kidding me? You really expect people to know the meaning of that word?
Sincerely,
FLG
Thursday, January 22, 2009
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7 comments:
Second try...Perhaps they assume that all comers have benefited from a classical education?
This is kind of insufferable to admit, but I knew the meaning of that word, not because of the benefits of a classical education but because it appears in the beginning of Middlemarch, and it struck me sufficiently that I have remembered it ever since. George Eliot, presumably, had the benefit of a classical education, so I benefited indirectly.
It's an odd word, no question. I think I first saw it in Milton Friedman's "Capitalism and Freedom" (long before I ever took Greek).
I guess encountering this word for the first time is like the Kennedy assassination.
Can I just remark, BTW, that Middlemarch is an awesome book? Eliot makes every sentence twinkle.
Another BTW: the word that drove me crazy on the GRE, many years ago, was "sully." I couldn't figure out whether the opposite was "purify" or "cleanse." I still don't know, but I know that when I checked a dictionary afterward I had definitely gotten it wrong.
Cleanse. dave.s.
There's a nifty play called Eleemosynary which I saw in college; the word has stuck in my memory since.
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