Silly ogged: bots don't have thoughts!
A gratuitous shot at Timbot in the very first comment? Ouch.
What exactly do I have to fear if Howley wins? That the next time catherine sees me, she'll punch me?
Actually, that sounds properly fearful. Consider me warned.
4: they'll release the video of you and that girl showing off for Saiselgy & the rest of the rooftop partygoers.
4: Have you no shame? At long last, have you no shame?
w-lfs-n is undead. Howley has sucked out his soul and sold his kidneys.
they'll release the video of you and that girl Fontana Labs
8: Come on, *that's* no disincentive.
They've already released the photos; I don't see what more harm can be done.
As a nerd, I was being hyperwhite.
Will it burnish my nerd cred if I point out that w-lfs-n has confused "fearful" with "fearsome"?
It would have, if you had been correct.
Cobblers' to you, ogged. w-lfs-n is afraid that catherine will hit him:
she'll punch me.... that sounds properly fearful
It is the prospect of being hit he's describing -- "that" -- and a thing that inspires fear is uniquely described as "fearsome." The person in whom fear is inspired -- w-lfs-n -- is "fearful."
Of course some limp lexicographers may say "fearful" can go either way.
some limp lexicographers may say
Always a bad sign when you have to preemptively deride the dictionary.
I am honored to know that your eagle eye is waiting for me to fail, slol.
limp lexicographers
And William Blake, but who listens to him anymore?
some limp lexicographers may say
That was urbanitese for, "damn, it looks like I'm wrong but I'm going to bluff this out anyway."
Honestly, I never registered "fearful" as a synonym of "fearsome." I abide in awe.
I am honored to know that your eagle eye is waiting for me to fail, slol.
He's still trying to get you back for the infamous viz. incident.
The plot thickens. Clearly these words are a complete and utter mess and should be banned.
I'm not, actually, awaiting a w-lfs-n solecism. I just find them amusing, is all.
So amusing you invent them when they aren't there.
Clearly ben requires less subtlety than I showed in 20. I looked it up in OED before I wrote 16 and realized I was wrong already. I concede the point. I apologize and abase myself. What more do you want?
Who's to say the OED isn't wrong? The logic in 16 in unassailable, dictionaries be damned. So w-lfs-n was, in fact, in error.
29: What, you don't own a camera?
The logic in 16 in unassailable
Yeah, but according to the source in 23, the facts in 16 are wrong -- I said "uniquely," but it apparently ain't so. That was the last straw I could cling to.
What, you don't own a camera?
There are all kinds of "can't," apo.
Clearly ben requires less subtlety than I showed in 20.
I got the idea in 20. I just wanted to pile leafy Pelion on Ossa, as 'twere.
It does look like a classic case of prescriptivists' fingers in the dike. I'm more sympathetic to this one than to the "their" issue, though. You really ought to have two distinct words here.
32: but the facts as you initially thought they were are the facts as they ought to be. Which are the facts that matter.
the facts as you initially thought they were are the facts as they ought to be. Which are the facts that matter.
True. Also, Iraq is a safe, functioning democracy today.
pile leafy Pelion on Ossa
You know, I'm pretty sure you are using this incorrectly, unless you mean to say that your efforts have been in vain.
as 'twere
Gruntman thought he'd sealed off the tweeverse hermetically forever. MEANWHILE…
Lily-gilder.
It's "paint the lily," you know.
Well, in the Georgics Virgil recounts the failure of some brothers to pile Ossa on Pelion, and then get Olympus on Ossa, which is the opposite order from Homer ("ter sunt conati imponere Pelio Ossam / scilicet atque Ossae frondosum inuoluere Olympum; / ter pater exstructos disiecit fulmine montis"); I don't have the Homer to hand. I think, though, that in general it just means piling coals on Newcastle these days.
Ogged's right: paint the lily and gild refined gold.
piling coals on Newcastle
It's carrying coals to Newcastle.
The abbreviated form ''gild the lily" has been in circulation for some 200 years, according to the American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms, though it competed with ''paint the lily" well into the 20th century. In recent decades, ''gild the lily" has been the decisive winner in everyday, non-Shakespearean contexts....
Now who's being a prescriptivist loser?
Thank you, LB.
Additionally, ogged, YHL.
as 'twere
Tweeness aside, I've never understood this phrase. I mean, I know what it means: "as it were" means IYKWIMAITYD. But why does that particular aggomeration of words mean that?
Also, it's a kind of tic in the later Henry James, if I remember correctly.
"as it were" doesn't have the connotation of (scandalous!) subtext the way "IYKWIMAITYD" does. "As" is introducing a supposition, expressed by the subjunctive, like "as if" or "as though"; "as it were" = "as if it were so", "as if one might so put it", etc.
"as it were" doesn't have the connotation of (scandalous!) subtext the way "IYKWIMAITYD"
It does though, if used by a person of specific class and education and uttered in the appropriately purring accent -- they use it to signify a double entendre.
You've used it here in a nonliteral sense, by way of saying, oh look, I have made an erudite reference, join me in appreciating it.
Well clearly it can mean that/be used that way. But it's not inappropriate in other contexts, the way IYKWIMAITYD would be.
Actually, I'm not persuaded of that. You're saying, "take notice of and indulge me in my figure of speech, with which by flagging in this wise I signal my own becoming (and entirely fictional) discomfort, while simultaneously inviting your collusion: you know what I mean."
But "IYKWIMAITYD" is only apt when there's a salacious second meaning.
There's not something salacious about implicating someone in your erudition?
Here's a use from Spencer's Shepherd's Calendar: "The messenger, and as it were, the forerunner of springe." Now, this is a completely appropriate use, I think you'll agree. Even saying something like "this young shoot [here in the garden] is, as it were, the messenger of spring"—totally kosher. But minimal salacity.
There's not something salacious about implicating someone in your erudition?
If only.
"As it were" involves "if it's proper to say so or speak this way"; sometimes the answer is yes, although not really literally ("messenger of spring"), sometimes no (because the subject matter is improper any which way). The latter case is the intersection of "as it were" and "IYKWIMAITYD", and you're trying to assimilate the former to it. But it just won't fly.
Man, you see how easy I whip this junk out (as it were)? I should get paid for this shit.
Hey baby, want to be implicated in my erudition, as it were?
Proximity to "hey baby" interferes with measurements of salacity.
sometimes the answer is yes, although not really literally ("messenger of spring")
You're making a distinction into a dichotomy. This case is still one in which you're enlisting the collusion of your interlocutor in an indulgence -- which always involves a frisson.
60 should be "Do you want to be, as it were, implicated in my erudition?" or "Do you want to be implication in my, as it were, erudition?"
I'm not making a distinction into a dichotomy; you're trying to collapse a distinction into nothing. Note that I never said these are two distinct uses of "as it were". Claim that there's a frisson in enlisting collusion into indulgences (my, what a lot of five-dollar words!); I can go along with that. But it's not a salacious frisson—and if you want to claim that all frissons are salacious, then I'll just say that it's not a frisson about something salacious. In cases where "IYKWIM" would be appropriate, there's a twofold frisson: first, you do get me to see what you mean; second, what you mean!.
This case is still one in which you're enlisting the collusion of your interlocutor in an indulgence -- which always involves a frisson.
You've read "Metaphor and the Cultivation of Intimacy", by Ted Cohen, in Critical Inquiry, Vol. 5, No. 1, Special Issue on Metaphor. (Autumn, 1978), pp. 3-12, I take it?
I don't think you know how to flirt, Ben.
But third-personally I think you need "I'd like to be the implication in her erudition." (If a man is talking about a woman.)
But 67 seems of a piece with your contention that there is no innocent "as it were". Which is bollocks, and which I would have thought my 57 would have lain to rest (as it were).
We were flirting?
Not us, champ. But your resolute refusal to see anything cozy (5 and dime word!) about enlisting your interlocutor in your little indulgence seems to me to reflect obtuseness on the flirting front.
there is no innocent "as it were"
I'm sticking with it: there is no innocent "as it were." If you're using your metaphor naïvely, you don't flag it like that.
But I've already acknowledged that potential for coziness in 65 supra.
Nevertheless it's true; I'm an extraordinarily bad flirt.
More from Spenser, name misspelled above (mea culpa), drawn from the Calendar:
Now, as exemplia non multiplicanda sunt praeter necessitam, I'll stop there. If you think those instances, in their contexts, all have in common that they carry greater salacity, frisson, or coziness than metaphors undecorated by "as it were", you're on crack, and there's an end on't.For if my memory fayle not, Tullie in that booke, wherein he endeuoureth to set forth the paterne of a perfect Oratour, sayth that ofttimes an auncient worde maketh the style seeme graue, and as it were reuerend: no otherwise then we honour and reuerence gray heares for a certein religious regard
For what in most English wryter vseth to be loose, and as it were vngyrt, in this Author it is well grounded, finely framed, and strongly trussed vp together.
They were first of the Greekes the inuentours of them called Æglogaj as it were [aigon] or [aigonomon]. [logoi]. that is Goteheards tales. For although in Virgile and others the speakers be [more shepheards then] Goteheards, yet Theocritus… [he's talking about eclogues]
The matter very well accordeth with the season of the moneth, the yeare now drouping, & as it were, drawing to his last age. [February]
The swallow) which bird vseth to be counted the messenger, as it were, the fore runner of springe.
At whose wonderful gyft al men being astonied and as it were rauished, with delight, thinking (as it was indeede) that he was inspired from aboue, called him vatem:
The braunch) He meaneth Dido, who being, as it were the main braunch now withered the buddes that is beautie (as he sayd afore) can nomore flourish.
Spenser: not necessarily reflective of current usage.
But I think we can all agree that those uses of "as it were" are completely acceptable by contemporary standards. Orthographically eccentric, sure, even in his own time, but those are all "as it were"s that we could accept today.
The truth is that I'm only usiny Spenser because he was quoted in the OED for "as it were", and there are online editions of his works, and I have a poor imagination.
I still say if Spenser's using these metaphors entirely innocently, he doesn't need to say "as it were." Is it in there for scansion? Fine, I'm on crack.
And no, I've not read Ted Cohen. I'm just making this stuff up. I should get paid for it.
I didn't think you had. Why don't you? It's an interesting essay, and short.
I will, I will. I'm in the middle of reading something else. (Believe it or not.) In a bit.
If you don't have jstor access, I can email it to you.
If you don't have jstor access, I can email it to you.
slol has already said there would be no titty pictures, ben. Don't embarrass yourself.
From Cohen, p. 8.
There is a unique way in which the maker and the appreciator of a metaphor are drawn closer to one another. Three aspects are involved: (1) the speaker issues a kind of concealed invitation; (2) the hearer expends a special effort to accept the invitation; and (3) this transaction constitutes the acknowledgment of a community.
Though what you've quoted undermines your claims in two ways: it's supposed to be applicable to all metaphor, and including "as it were" doesn't do much for the concealedness of the concealed invitation, which is important.
Further, from p. 11.
there can be no routine method for ... detecting metaphors when they appear
Did he ever follow up on the paper?
My love for you is like a truck, as it were.
It's like living, as it were, in a powder keg and giving off sparks.
I was just about to qualify 84: including "as it were" makes the fact that there's an invitation there explicit, without yet telling what it's an invitation to: flirtatious.
He's written a fair amount about metaphor, and some of his other writing on aesthetics includes talk about communities and identification. He doesn't, frustratingly, publish often, though. You might look at "Identifying with Metaphor: Metaphors of Personal Identification", "High and Low Thinking about High and Low Art", or "High and Low Art, and High and Low Audiences". The last two have only an attenuated connection but are interesting anyway.
90: I bet he's stopped calling you too, the cad.
I was right about Henry James, too. Here's Ozick parodying HJ's later style. Heh.
May I say, mutatis mutandis, that she may have been getting at me! In point of fact, dear madam, I have in mind rather my unfortunate engagement with your predecessor, an American lady journalist representing the New York Herald, with whom I sat, as it were, for an interview during my American journey in 1904, my maiden voyage, so to speak, into a venture of this kind.
But just "an invitation to intimacy" isn't flirting by any name at all, excpet a false one; ordinary metaphors are, by Cohen, invitations to intimacy. But since there can be no general procedure for their discovery (by Cohen), they aren't or aren't always explicit invitations (there not being a general rule is compatible with its being pretty obvious much of the time). What "as it were" (by slol) contributes is pointing out the invitation. I still think that doesn't exhaust correct applications of "as it were", and that we've seen plenty of examples here to prove it, but I'll grant that it's a possibility and that it captures the structure of flirtation, a subject on which I am expert.
"an invitation to intimacy" isn't flirting by any name at all, excpet a false one
Okay, Ben, what exactly do you think flirting is?
I'll thank you not to joke about that, M/tch. God, you really are callous, aren't you?
The thing about flirting is, the more you analyze it's precise, atomic components and formulaic structure, the more adept you become at moistening the ladies' panties.
Did you read the rest of my comment, slol? If metaphor = invitation to intimacy, then invitation to intimacy ≠ flirting, because metaphor ≠ flirting.
I'm not sure I like your first apostrophe, young lady.
Panty-moistening is beyond the scope of this discussion.
If you had read 90 and 93, you might reach the conclusion that I think flirting involves an invitation to intimacy where the presence of the invitation adverted to even though the precise nature of what it invites is not, in contradistinction to metaphor, where one need not advert to the invitation.
More needs to be said to distinguish the above from so-called innocent as it wereing, which is, I maintain, not flirtatious, but it's a better start than your carrot sticks constituted.
Panty-moistening is beyond the scope of this discussion.
This conversation : the collective ladies' panties :: layering kitty litter : oil spill on the driveway.
the collective ladies' panties
Ah, the Red Diaper folk rear their heads again.
I don't want to moisten the collective ladies' panties, heebie, but only yours and yours alone.
102: You're saying it's effective then?
105: I think she's saying--"oil spill"--her panties (or the collective Panty) is unbelievably wet. I don't understand the "kitty litter" metaphor, but I'm a notorious prude.
My own panties are still beyond the scope of discussion.
That raises a question for w-lfs-n, I think: we don't really care about the panties (or Panty--I still don't understand the collectivist Panty workings), but the moistness, which doesn't technically require panties. (Or so I've been led to believe.) So I don't think #107 offers much guidance. w-lfs-n?
If metaphor = invitation to intimacy, then invitation to intimacy ≠ flirting, because metaphor ≠ flirting.
This makes no sense at all, Ben. If metaphor functions as Cohen says it does in 83, then it is a form of flirting. You're interpreting "concealed" to mean "utterly concealed," but of course this can't be true. It's right out there in the open, it's just in disguise.
And if metaphor is a form of flirting, then appending "as it were" to your metaphor is simply flirting for the unsubtle.
Imagine heebie bats her eyelashes at you. You offer to help her get the gnat out of her eye. She, amused but not surprised by your obtuseness, touches you on the shoulder and giggles while slightly averting her eyes.
eyelash-batting = metaphor; shoulder-touch + giggle + eye-averting = metaphor + "as it were"
Sorry to drag you into this, heebie, but you're the only woman here.
Willing suspension of disbelief.
So did John Lennon.
Not everybody has to
imagine no possessions
for some folks that's exactly what they've got
Just ekin' out a livin'
in a world that's unforgivin'
While the haves are patronizing the have-nots
The great and incomparable Mitch Benn, ladies and gentlemen.
109: I'm hoping for the "as it were" controversy to give way to something exciting, like swimblogging.
They're all bunched up.
Now mine are moist.
While the haves are patronizing the have-nots
If the haves are patronizing the have-nots, that should generate some income.
And you may say I have no dreams
And perhaps that's how it seems
But in a world this tough
dreams are not enough
Not everybody has to
imagine there's no heaven
When hell on earth is where they live each day
Imagining's a start no doubt
But till we pull our fingers out
and change the world that's how it's gonna stay
120: Please now imagine a small black child saying "That's imperialist!" on endless loop.
123: Oh, easy. There happens to be one outside my window.
I have it on good authority that heebie is now singing "How Much is That Woggie in the Window". Bad heebie!
If metaphor functions as Cohen says it does in 83, then it is a form of flirting.
Slol, it just ain't so:
It is not, however, an invariably friendly thing, nor is it intended to be. Sometimes one draws near another in order to deal a penetrating thrust. When the device is a hostile metaphor or a cruel joke requiring much background and effort to understand, it is all the more painful because the victim has been made a complicitor in his own demise.
It should be absolutely plain that one can employ a metaphor in speaking to someone and yet not be flirting with that person, or playing at flirting with that person, or doing anything at all in which flirting plays a role however tenuous! Even if one also says "as it were" in the appropriate place (as is, as I continue to think, not the case with "IYKWIMAITYD", if it's properly deployed)! Since that is so, either you're wrong about flirting or Cohen's wrong about metaphor, or both. Since your claims about flirting seem also to involve equivocating on "intimacy", and you were already making these plainly false claims about metaphor and "as it were" prior to having read Cohen, I'm going to say that we ought to go with either option 1 or option 3.
You're interpreting "concealed" to mean "utterly concealed," but of course this can't be true. It's right out there in the open, it's just in disguise.
Basically, you're ignoring entirely the aspect of what the disguise disguises. "Moscow is a cold city". Am I flirting? Is it even obvious that I'm making a metaphor? It's not necessarily out there in the open, in disguise; sometimes it really is disguised effectively. Whether someone is the type to notice the disguise is itself something the use of cryptic ways of talking can determine. It's not utterly concealed, of course, but there are more options than "utterly concealed" and "'concealed' in the open".
What do you think of this sentence? According to Nietzsche, theater teaches the
Is "as it were" being employed incorrectly? Is it flirtatious? Isn't it functioning here as if to say "and here's a way of looking at it, why not try this out"? art of regarding oneself as a hero, from a distance and as it were simplified and transfigured
.
M/tch, now you made the small child cry. Apologize.
Hey, what happened to my <q>s? Did ogged disable them?
The last paragraph should read:
What do you think of this sentence? “According to Nietzsche, theater teaches the ‘art of regarding oneself as a hero, from a distance and as it were simplified and transfigured’.” Is "as it were" being employed incorrectly? Is it flirtatious? Isn't it functioning here as if to say "and here's a way of looking at it, why not try this out"?
I mean, think of all the metaphors you employ every day. Please, tell me you have a more plausible account of what flirting is and what "as it were" does.
Please, won't someone think of the metaphors?
"Moscow is a cold city".
"... so how about we huddle for warmth! rrrOWwrr."
127: I'm sorry, small child, that you interpreted my innocent reportage of heebie's hurtful behavior as hurtful itself. Feel better!
This thread was actually conducted not by w-lfs-n and slol directly, but by their respective bots. That may explain the endless loop feel it had.
I'm tired, now, ben, and if you want to win this thread, please go right ahead.
Don't think the next meetup won't be a symposium on metaphor and flirtation, slol.
SOME BELATED THOUGHTS. First, let's consider 60 and 63 again. In 63 we have (a) "Do you want to be, as it were, implicated in my erudition?"; de-"as it were"ing that, we have (b) "Do you want to be implicated in my erudition?". Now I maintain the following:
1. There is no pure signalling mechanism in speech. That is, there can't be something whose use is solely to signal the presence of something else, and which never means anything else, because anything of that nature could be used to play at that signalling, etc. (This is just an extension of the principle that there's no mark of sincerity, because, of course, actors, not to mention out and out deceptive liars, would use it.) So you can't just say that including the "as it were" entsubtles (b) for the benefit of the clueless. Pretense to the effect that such coarsening is necessary could be part of the whole affair, for example.
2. Whether one wants to consider this an exploitation of the entsubtling (I'm so fond of this utterly pretentious coinage) effects of "as it were" or another way to use it altogether is indifferent to me, but we should note that (a) seems altogether lighter in spirit than (b) (provided, of course, its utterance is given the proper shape). Drawing attention to one's word-japery isn't just a way to make a sharp tool blunt, it's also a way to float above it and make one's commitment to any of its meanings less clear—an ironization maneuver.
Actually, the main point of this comment is "entsubtle".
its also a way to float above it and make one's commitment to any of it's meanings less clear
There we are.