[lit-ideas] Re: Sub-Tlety
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 28 Jun 2004 08:19:13 EDT
We are discussing Geary's poetry.
Julie Krueger proposes an antonym for 'sub-textual' ('subtle'):
>supra-textual? meta-textual?
Thanks. I notice that my report from the OED was not in plain text, so I'm
resending it now:
"subtle" "a. French 'subtil', cf. English subtile,
cognate with Provencal 'sotil', Italian 'sottile',
Spanish 'sutil', Portuguese 'subtil'. From Latin
'subtilem', nominative 'subtiliis', for 'subtelis.
From 'subtextlis', finely woven, f. sub, under
and 'texla, woven stuff, web.
-----
I'm not sure about 'supra-textual', but indeed, 'supra-' seems like the
right antonymic prefix for 'sub-' (It's interesting that in pronouncing
'subtle',
you drop the 'b', making the connetion with 'sub' less obvious).
In a way it's like an 'implicature'. This is said to correspond to the
'under-statement', or 'sous-entendu' -- where, again, we play with the idea of
'under'.
Maybe the strict antonym would be with 'over-', though ('overstatement')?
Cheers,
JL
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