The so-called pejorative tendency has yet another cause. It is in the nature of human malice to take pleasure in looking for a vice or a fault behind a quality. The French have the adjective prude, which had formerly a good and noble acceptation, since it is the feminine of preux. But the spirit of the narrators (perhaps also some feeling of rancour against the loftier virtues) turned this adjective aside towards the equivocal sense that it now bears. Words which refer to the relations of the sexes are especially exposed to changes of this kind. We remember what a noble signification amant and mattress still possessed in Corneille. But they are dethroned, as was Buhle in German. Here we see the inevitable results of a false delicacy; honourable names are dishonoured by being given to things which are dishonourable.
Michel Bréal
Related topics
acceptation
adjective
aside
behind
cause
delicacy
equivocal
false
fault
feeling
feminine
french
german
given
good
human
inevitable
kind
looking
malice
mattress
nature
noble
now
pejorative
perhaps
pleasure
prude
quality
refer
see
sense
signification
spirit
take
tendency
vice
yet
relations
words
things
rancour
names
honourable
corneille
Related quotes
We have never cherished illusions about our enemies, we have not embraced and kissed them, we have not flattered them and we have not caressed them, we have never bowed to them. Our Party and Government have always maintained a firm, principled, Marxist-Leninist stand towards the enemies of peace and socialism; they have sharply and constantly exposed the imperialists, whether U.S. or British, French or Italian, and their policy of war and aggression; they have been irreconcilable with and have energetically and unreservedly supported the just cause of the peoples who have risen in struggle against imperialism. They have rendered all their support to the fraternal Algerian, Cuban, Congolese, Laotian and other peoples in their sacred struggle against imperialism, resolutely condemning all the aggressive attempts of imperialism.
Enver Hoxha
In looking at this wreck of Governments in all European countries, there is one consideration that suggests itself, sadly elucidative of our modern epoch. These Governments, we may be well assured, have gone to anarchy for this one reason inclusive of every other whatsoever, That they were not wise enough; that the spiritual talent embarked in them, the virtue, heroism, intellect, or by whatever other synonyms we designate it, was not adequate,-probably had long been inadequate, and so in its dim helplessness had suffered, or perhaps invited falsity to introduce itself; had suffered injustices, and solecisms, and contradictions of the Divine Fact, to accumulate in more than tolerable measure; whereupon said Governments were overset, and declared before all creatures to be too false.
Thomas Carlyle
The darkness crumbles away.
It is the same old druid Time as ever,
Only a live thing leaps my hand,
A queer sardonic rat,
As I pull the parapet's poppy
To stick behind my ear.
Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew
Your cosmopolitan sympathies.
Now you have touched this English hand
You will do the same to a German
Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure
To cross the sleeping green between.
It seems you inwardly grin as you pass
Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes,
Less chanced than you for life,
Bonds to the whims of murder,
Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,
The torn fields of France.
What do you see in our eyes
At the shrieking iron and flame
Hurled through still heavens?
What quaver--what heart aghast?
Poppies whose roots are in man's veins
Drop, and are ever dropping;
But mine in my ear is safe--
Just a little white with the dust.
Isaac Rosenberg