Friday, September 16, 2005

The Consolation of Unphilosophy

I learn new words every day (although I sometimes suspect I forget them as I sleep), but my current research is throwing up a number of interesting Regency terms, many of them cant.

One is "unphilosophize," a transitive verb. It was actually first used (so far as we know) by Alexander Pope, in a letter of 1713: "Our passions, our interests, flow in upon us, and unphilosophize us into mere mortals."

That makes its meaning clear enough. But just over a century later, Byron adds a sexual sense. Writing to his half-sister, he is explaining why he failed to hold to a resolve to keep his sexual distance from a woman who has been pursuing him (and who in fact followed him from London to Geneva):

Now--don't scold--but what could I do?--a foolish girl--in
spite of all I could say or do--would come after me--or
rather went before me--for I found her here . . . I could
not exactly play the Stoic with a woman--who had scrambled
eight hundred miles to unphilosophize me.

5 Comments:

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6:27 AM  
Blogger Gregory Feeley said...

Hmm . . . Is "Wayne" one of those blogging spambots that led Madeleine to install a little Turing Test on the comment page of her own blog? (I can't imagine that "he" is anything else.)

"I will bookmark your blog and pass it on to my friends." Alas, I'm sure he will.

7:29 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"He" likely is. Certainly, he posts spam.

---L.

11:14 AM  
Blogger Madeleine Robins said...

That's exactly the sort of blogging spambots that got me to install Word Verification, Greg. In one day I got ten spam comments, and decided that life was short.

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