[Milton-L] New to list - Epic Simile question/Paradise Lost

[Daniel W. Doerksen]

I agree with Professor Skulsky. If the language has two words, 
"enormousness" and "enormity," I think that simply to equate them or make 
one the duplicate of the other impoverishes the language. I favor keeping 
them distinct.

Daniel W. Doerksen

At 03:02 PM 9/28/2008, you wrote:
>Latin *enormitas* means hugeness or vastness, period (no moral
>connotations), and this is the meaning that survives as standard in
>latinate English "enormity" until well into the nineteenth century. But
>English needed a word for "act of immense evil," and "enormity" began to
>be generally reserved to fill the expressive gap.
>
>That specialization ("act of immense evil") was justified in the
>nineteenth century and (as far as I can see) continues to be justified
>in the twentieth and twenty-first. The fact that in particular contexts
>various famous twentieth-c. writers decided to bring back the more
>trivial usage (vastness, hugeness, immensity do as well for the merely
>quantitative meaning) doesn't override the claims of specialization.
>
>A parallel is the revival of "uninterest" as  a standard meaning of
>"disinterest." Again the specialized and standard (moral-juridical)
>sense of "disinterest" is significantly different from the sense of
>rivals like "impartial," and it would be a pity if that comparatively
>recent specialization got lost in favor of an archaic meaning amply
>expressible by other familiar words (including the word "uninterest").
>
>The modern Webster's apparently cites Steinbeck, Theroux, Conant, and
>Doctorow against this specialization. But (to repeat) this appeal to
>authority is not very persuasive. Steinbeck is a major writer; arguably
>Doctorow is too. But their achievement has no remotely coherent bearing
>on the case for specializing "enormity" (or, mutatis mutandis,
>"disinterest").
>
>I suspect that Steinbeck and Doctorow were aware of the history of the
>specialized usage and didn't care a flying fig about it — indeed  were
>glad of an opportunity to flout it; history and nicety be damned. If so,
>three cheers, say I; greatness has its privileges. The rest of us (if we
>know what's good for us) will want to mind our p's and q's.
>
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Daniel W. Doerksen 
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