Wordie [wûrd • ē]
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11 wordies list
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first listed by:
eggplantia5 (2920 words)
appears in these lists:
free's Words, by free
Words I like, by dornyika
Stuffie: Dead, by bilby
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I wonder if Herm meant something different by "inconsiderable" than we would mean today. Maybe something like "imponderable" or "dumbfounding", i.e., so astounding that one cannot consider (contemplate) it.
Ha ha - a bad citation I think. The subject is a whale, natch, and the braining of the "bashing on the head" variety. Herm has been expounding the "potency" of the sperm whale, and so proposes to show us some of its more trifling accomplishments that we may have an impression of the terrible extent of its full wrath.
Oh god, now I'm starting to sound like him.
That passage in its full glory:
Now, mark. Unerringly impelling this dead, impregnable, uninjurable wall, and this most buoyant thing within; there swims behind it all a mass of tremendous life, only to be adequately estimated as piled wood is--by the cord; and all obedient to one volition, as the smallest insect. So that when I shall hereafter detail to you all the specialities and concentrations of potency everywhere lurking in this expansive monster; when I shall show you some of his more inconsiderable braining feats; I trust you will have renounced all ignorant incredulity, and be ready to abide by this; that though the Sperm Whale stove a passage through the Isthmus of Darien, and mixed the Atlantic with the Pacific, you would not elevate one hair of your eye-brow.
mumbling to self ...
some of his more inconsiderable braining feats? lesseee now... we can work this out ...
a braining feat ... some kind of mental accomplishment
a considerable braining feat .... an impressive mental accomplishment
an inconsiderable braining feat .... an unimpressive mental accomplishment
a more inconsiderable braining feat ... a totally unimpressive mental accomplishment
Yet, somehow, one feels that Hermann actually means to say the opposite.
Oh, Hermy, why must you be so deliberately abstruse?
...I shall show you some of his more inconsiderable braining feats...
- Melville, Moby-Dick, ch. 76
Something with which we think that we think.
A species is born
Brain is the body's baby
New kid on the block!
Stu Charno
One man had a phone, but it did him no good: he had no ears.
One man had a book, but it did him no good: he had no eyes.
One man had a brain, but……..
(A chap who resides in another place wishes to note that "Abrupt parables went out with knee breeches and the second ice age.")
--Jan Cox