Most Awkward Sentence Ever
When reading old books, a certain type of person likes to laugh or snicker when they come across some quaint old bit of vocabulary that happens to have changed slightly in meaning in the intervening decades.
You know the things I’m talking about. Describing someone who is merely strange as queer, or someone happy as gay. Mentioning throwing another faggot on the fire, perhaps.
Language changes. We all know this, and most of these instances really aren’t that noteworthy, let alone funny.
Sometimes, though…
Read, if you would, the following excerpt from a novel, and see if you can spot the bit that doesn’t mean what you probably first interpreted it as.
Did you spot it? Here, just to make clear what we’re talking about…
A man leaps out of bed… after grasping at “his vanishing manhood”. (!)
No, this isn’t some erotica title. He isn’t engaging in some early-morning self-abuse. The book is Out of the Air, a justifiably long-forgotten novel from 1920 by the late Inez Haynes Gillmore, who was exceedingly fond of her thesaurus. For “manhood”, in this case, you should read “courage”, not… “penis”.
Sorry. Some things are so horrible they have to be shared. Shared pain is lessened, y’know.
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Well, it’s been a good run (been reading since at least Nov 2009) and I’d like to thank you for what at one time was my favorite blog. I hope that your lack of output recently is due to great and wonderful things in the real world.
Good luck and thank you!
Although I suppose abject fear can cause one’s manhood (in the more modern sense of the word) to diminish significantly (assuming one is male).
Somewhat off-topic, someone is still interested in your Jan. 6, 2007 post on Cryptome.info about Dean Scheu. Within the last couple of weeks they submitted a bid request or two, on a contract staffing web site, to push the Cryptome post down to the fifth page of Google results when their name was searched. (If you care, and would like more detail, email me.)
Slugsite: an interesting blog.