Public Spat

Dearest Readers:

Permit a little ranting, if you will. My fellow poster, Definer, and I seem to have a disagreement with the purpose of our blog. For myself I feel no need to play amateur etymologist and provide you with all manner of esoteric derivations. As delightful as this may be in the company of good friends and much alcohol, the exact interest for you is in question. Moreover, these activities miss I. A. Richards point about the interinanimation of words. As I don’t have Richards on my bookshelf, I am going to quote Foss, Foss, and Trapp (Contemporary Perspectives on Rhetoric) in regards to this particularly insightful contribution by Richards: “The meaning we find for a word comes to it only with respect to the meanings of the other words that surround it; a word is always a cooperative member of a group of words” (45).

In place of short definitions I would like to give you a bit of commentary, some poetry when I am able, and a few ideas to consider during the course of your day. This is apt to spark a response from Definer, but the gantlet is down and the gates are up. Hence, my friend, what I am asking is that you extract material from both yourself and the items that you study.

There, the dispute is now public; so if the water was tepid before it surely is hot now. Am I being unfair?