[lit-ideas] The Grice Bench
- From: "" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "Jlsperanza" for DMARC)
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2015 06:04:22 -0500
In a message dated 11/17/2015 3:39:21 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
On his retirement he tried to refuse LSE' retirement gift
I read at
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/2017953
Q: "Is it rude to refuse a gift?"
A: "If someone has taken the time, thought and effort to choose and
purchase a gift for you, then yes it is rude to refuse it."
On [Popper's] retirement he tried to refuse LSE's retirement gift...
Perhaps 'refudiate' works better.
The use of 'tried to' IMPLICATES that he did not succeed and that the gift
was, as it shoud, accepted. It was possibly a very 'nice' gift, too.
George Mikes (in "How to become a Brit") says that if you are in doubt, use
'nice' -- "the most abused word in the English language").
When Grice retired from UC/Berkeley they had a party. When he 'retired'
from Oxford to go to Berkeley, he recalls that upon coming back to deliver the
John Locke lectures, his former colleagues, as he passed by them on High
Street, say, woud utter Oxonianisms like, "Grice! I don't think I _have_
seen you for some time, now!".
Much later, a bench was built outside Moses Hall. It's called the Grice
Bench and it is said that whoever sits there is allowed to disimplicate in
public.
The bench-warming ceremony was fun, with speeches, in a very accented --
"but still mutually intelligible," Geary adds, "I hope" -- English, by Hans
Sluga (who recalled how Grice taught him the complex rules of cricket when
Sluga was supposed to rather be studying at Balliol, if you excuse me the
split infinitive).
Moses Hall is named after Moses.
Cheers,
Speranza
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