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Re: [OM] Kiev 4

Subject: Re: [OM] Kiev 4
From: DZDub <jdubikins@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2013 17:48:20 -0500
On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 1:52 PM, Chris Barker <ftog@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> It's used quite frequently on the radio Over Here, Joel.  I've most often
> heard it from politicians who are professing their ability to take "tough
> action": "We will not resile from . . .".
>
> Chris
>
> On 15 Mar 2013, at 18:14, DZDub <jdubikins@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > I wonder where the word "resile" can be found in use?  Any actual known
> > authors cited?


Politicians don't count, Chris. <g>  I was thinking of Dryden or Goldsmith.
 Hobbes -- seems like a Hobbesian word. Something like "All men resile from
striking down even ill-disposed and despotic monarchs for fear of distress
to the public order."  A good editor would then have said, "Hobbes, you
mean "recoil."

However, Google doesn't know the word and even as I write is trying to get
me to change it to about a dozen other things.  So I've just learned a
legitimate new word which I had better not use unless I want to be
misunderstood by all but an English politician.

But I don't sense that "resilience" could come from this use you cite.  It
suggests the word has gone off from the root meaning along two separate
paths.  Resilience doesn't suggest the notion of "re-" as "back" but as
"again" -- springing back again and again -- much closer to the classical
bits.

This has reminded me of an episode in graduate school when a classmate was
wanting to use the verb at the root of "reprehensible."  "Is it possible to
'reprehend'?"  It must be possible, but none of us thought it would be a
good idea at that time.  E.B. White reckoned that it is a weakening of
style to predicate adjectives rather than use a good verb.  I suspect this
is an example, and now reprehend it.

Joel W.
-- 
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