Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Noteworthy Word -- Scorning Stock

Did Bush & Cheney make us a Scorning-stock?

I guess this is a phrase, not a word, but it's interesting. It's a phrase I encountered in a bio of the first English Queen Elizabeth, in a note from one high secretary to another.

The only reason I thought I knew what it meant was that in context it seemed to substitute very nicely for "laughingstock", a phrase that has not lost as much of its currency as the other phrase did.

It read: "But now let Christian charity work with you, Sir, for God's love, the King's, and the realm's; refuse not the offer which is so good, so godly, and so honourable unto you, that this realm be not made in one year a double tragedy and a lamentable spoil, and scorning-stock of all the world."

This esoteric conceit clumsily conceived by Ron Southern at 4:57 PM
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3 comments:

  1. Ron Southern5/13/2009 7:53 PM

    Sayonara to all you who were looking for baseball scores and Twinkie orgies!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Twilight5/15/2009 6:26 PM

    Dunno about Bush and Cheney (well I do, actually) but Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have managed to do it for Britain (at least in Brits Across the Pond's eyes). It took what - 600 or so years from Queen Liz's remark - but it came to pass - the country's a scorning stock. Its close cousin the USA has copied it too, with the help of the 2 gents you named. ;-(

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ron Southern5/15/2009 7:57 PM

    For you, I'd make an exception--we could have fun with Twinkies, I'm sure of it!!!

    ReplyDelete

Abandon hope, all ye who enter here! (At least put on your socks and pants.)

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