my blog entry for today
I was sitting in church tonight and I thought of a million zillion things I could blog about. Now as I sit in front of the computer, not one comes to mind. Duh.
The word of the day today is “betwixt”. It means between. Sometimes this word of the day calendar is really annoying. As if betwixt is a word I wouldn’t know. Then, the sentence they use is this:
Jack Sprat could eat no fat, his wife could eat no lean; and so betwixt the two of them, they licked the platter clean.
I got a little irritated with that too. I believe the poem goes “and so between the two of them”…. I’d like to smack that calendar writer.
So hostile I know.
I am eating crow now though… for those of you that don’t know what eating crow is, it is an expression you use when you make a grievous error.
I ripped off the calendar page, since it is 11:44pm and the day is nearly done, and I am somewhat annoyed at the word betwixt and the use of it in an incorrect sentence. As I go to toss it energetically into the trash, something catches my eye on the back …. I start to read…
Perhaps you’ve always said “and so between the two of them.” That’s fine, but when the Jack Sprat nursery rhyme was created (probably in the 1600’s in reference to Charles I of England and Henrietta Maria, his wife), “betwixt” and “between” were apparently equal. “Twixt”, like “tween” is closely related to “two”(and the be- prefix is Old English for “by”). A couple hundred years ago, the phrase “betwixt and between” took on a life of its own to mean “neither one thing nor the other”. At about this same time, “betwixt” fell out of favor, but it’s not archaic; nowadays, it’s simply used more consciously than “between”.
Oh… so they did it on purpose. And they even said “that’s fine” oh so politely. I suddenly feel guilty for wanting to smack the unknown calendar writer. But that brings me to the next question. What does it mean to use “betwixt” more consciously than “between”? It’s like saying the same thing isn’t it?
Hey… you can’t have an interesting perplexing fun awesome sassy cool and fantastic (aka popular) blog entry EVERY day.
The word of the day today is “betwixt”. It means between. Sometimes this word of the day calendar is really annoying. As if betwixt is a word I wouldn’t know. Then, the sentence they use is this:
Jack Sprat could eat no fat, his wife could eat no lean; and so betwixt the two of them, they licked the platter clean.
I got a little irritated with that too. I believe the poem goes “and so between the two of them”…. I’d like to smack that calendar writer.
So hostile I know.
I am eating crow now though… for those of you that don’t know what eating crow is, it is an expression you use when you make a grievous error.
I ripped off the calendar page, since it is 11:44pm and the day is nearly done, and I am somewhat annoyed at the word betwixt and the use of it in an incorrect sentence. As I go to toss it energetically into the trash, something catches my eye on the back …. I start to read…
Perhaps you’ve always said “and so between the two of them.” That’s fine, but when the Jack Sprat nursery rhyme was created (probably in the 1600’s in reference to Charles I of England and Henrietta Maria, his wife), “betwixt” and “between” were apparently equal. “Twixt”, like “tween” is closely related to “two”(and the be- prefix is Old English for “by”). A couple hundred years ago, the phrase “betwixt and between” took on a life of its own to mean “neither one thing nor the other”. At about this same time, “betwixt” fell out of favor, but it’s not archaic; nowadays, it’s simply used more consciously than “between”.
Oh… so they did it on purpose. And they even said “that’s fine” oh so politely. I suddenly feel guilty for wanting to smack the unknown calendar writer. But that brings me to the next question. What does it mean to use “betwixt” more consciously than “between”? It’s like saying the same thing isn’t it?
Hey… you can’t have an interesting perplexing fun awesome sassy cool and fantastic (aka popular) blog entry EVERY day.
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