Friday, November 09, 2007

Toothsome/aposiopesis

A quite d********* piece at the FT: Rahul Jacob lunches with Clarissa Dickson Wright.

(I am having a self-imposed ban for the month of November on a certain word beginning with the letter d, I have perhaps been overusing it recently, only fortunately I have been reading Tristram Shandy and there's a way around the prohibition.)

Volume 2, chapter 6:
---- "My sister, mayhap, quoth my uncle Toby, does not choose to let a man come so near her * * * *" Make this dash, -- 'tis an Aposiopesis. -- Take the dash away, and write Backside, ---- 'tis Bawdy. -- Scratch Backside out, and put Cover'd-way in, -- 'tis a Metaphor; -- and, I dare say, as fortification ran so much in my uncle Toby's head, that if he had been left to have added one word to the sentence, -- that word was it.

2 comments:

  1. Derivative?
    :-D

    The name "Clarissa" is just a bonus!

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  2. I've been thinking about Tristram Shandy again since enjoying the silly, fun movie last winter. It's been a dozen years or so, and reading that one paragraph in your post makes me think it may be time.

    Aposiopesis--what a great word!

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