[lit-ideas] Re: Exercise (sidenote)

  • From: David Ritchie <ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2009 19:50:07 -0800

Perhaps the third shoe--I don't want to pre-empt the dropping of the shoe Ursula expects to fall--might be names or expressions that you believe *ought* to be incorrect or in some way defective but which on inspection turn out to be just fine. My instance is Waterloo. I always felt that the word sounded too English. If the battle was named after something local then surely the place must have had a more Flemish or French name that the victors had anglicized. Until now, I had never bothered to check. Hard to believe, but there it is.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterloo,_Belgium

A Dutch name meaning wood with water. 'strawdinry. Now it's a university in Canada and a Hindu temple in Trinidad.

http://www.chemistrydaily.com/chemistry/University_of_Waterloo
http://www.traveladventures.org/continents/southamerica/waterloo02.shtml

Carry on.

David Ritchie,
always ready to greet the French at Waterloo Station

On Jan 31, 2009, at 10:32 AM, Ursula Stange wrote:

I was reading Daniel Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year (or is that A plague year?). He uses the word 'disappointment' to mean the ditching of an appointment. Silly me never made this connection. On top of that, it's only some years hence that I connected 'discard' with what you do with cards you don't want in card games. There must be many stories of this kind out there. Let's hear them.
Ursula, waiting for the next shoe to drop...
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