[Vhfcn-l] Monday musings

[Gary Thewlis]

Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone may be looking.

H.L. Mencken

 

What people are ashamed of usually makes a good story.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

 

If caught out in a lightning storm while golfing, hold up a 1-iron. Even God
can't hit a 1-iron...

Unknown

 

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of
nothing.

Oscar Wilde

 

You can't have everything. Where would you put it?

Steven Wright

 

You wake me up early in the morning to tell me I am right? Please wait until
I am wrong.

Johann von Neumann

 

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

 

Sooth

 

Sooth means "truth", an Old English word. It has not been in daily use for
about four centuries, except in the phrases by my sooth or my sooth,
interjections now obsolete which emphasised that the speaker was telling the
truth. Sooth was reintroduced in the nineteenth century as a literary
archaism by writers such as Sir Walter Scott.

 

In sooth, there was that in her face and in her voice when she spoke which
almost made Anne weep, through its strange sweetness and radiance. - A Lady
of Quality, by Frances Hodgson Burnett, 1896. This work is exceptionally
full of sooth - the author uses the word 20 times.

 

The best-known compounds of sooth are forsooth and soothsayer. The former
literally means "in truth" or "truly" but for the past two centuries or so
has been a humorous or derisive alternative to the disbelieving "Is that
so?" or "Indeed?"

 

"Is one to have no privacy, Glossop?" I said coldly. "I instructed Jeeves to
lock the door because I was about to disrobe." "A likely story!" said Tuppy,
and I'm not sure he didn't add "Forsooth!" - Right Ho, Jeeves, by P G
Wodehouse, 1934.

 

Soothsayer is much better known. This came into English early in the
fourteenth century, with the meaning one might expect - a person who tells
the truth. But within a century it had already been modified to mean
somebody who claims to be able to foretell the future.

 

Futurology has rather fallen out of fashion since the spectacular failure of
economists and other soothsayers to see the economic meltdown coming. - The
Herald, 2 Mar. 2012.

 

Sooth and soothe make an interesting doublet. The two have the same origin,
though the meaning of soothe has substantially diverged. In Old English
soothe meant to verify something, to prove it to be true. From the sixteenth
century on, soothe came successively to mean to corroborate some statement,
then to flatter or humor a person by agreeing with them, then to mollify or
appease and so to our current sense of rendering a person or animal calm or
quiet.

 

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

 

All humans Are 99.9% genetically identical and 98.4% of human genes are the
same as the genes of a chimpanzee.

 

A shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes.

 

Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories an hour.

 

Smartest dogs: 1) border collie; 2) poodle; 3) golden retriever. Dumbest
dog: Afghan.

 

The sound of E.T. walking was made by someone squishing her hands in jelly.

 

Elephants are the only mammals that can't jump.