It's a lot closer if you say "Un tambour, un tambour! Macbeth est
arrive!" But of course it still doesn't rhyme. Anyway the
investigation of scurrile was great. (Joyce doesn't miss many.)
Bob
,
On Apr 27, 2005, at 10:16 AM,
[hidden email] wrote:
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 11:14:51 -0600
> From: "Nicholas Thompson" <
[hidden email]>
> Subject: [FRIAM] "scurrile"
> To:
[hidden email]
> Message-ID: <
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> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> All--
>
> I do not believe for a minute that the person who came up with
> "scurrile" is not a native english speaker. I have spoken the
> language for 65 years, married to an obsessive reader for 46, my
> mother was newspaper writer and literary editor, my father a
> publisher, and I have NEVER heard the word scurrile before. But, lo,
> it exists.
>
>
> "[French, from Old French, from Latin scurrlis, jeering, from scurra,
> buffoon, possibly of Etruscan origin.]"
>
> The dictionary tries to insist that it is equivalent to scurrilous,
> but scurrilous sounds light hearted, compared to the dark sponde of
> scurrile, with its echoes of "vile" and "servile". It is a good day
> that brings a new word. THANK YOU. It's like saying that
>
> "Un tambour; un tambour! Voila Monsieur Macbeth qui est
> arrive."(sorry, no special characters. that should be "arrivay")
>
> has the same meaning as
>
> "A drum, a drum. Macbeth doth come."
>
> By the way, I had a look to see if the root "scurr-" had anythng to
> do with "squirrel". No, in fact. The rodent's name comes from
> another root, scuir- which means, both "tail" and "shadow". When you
> see your next squirrel, call out to him "Shadow-Tail" and see what he
> says.
>
>