Re: curses & insults

Nik Taylor wrote:

> John Cowan wrote:
> > English had this for a while, too, using the old 2sg pronouns for
> > insult:
> >
> >         I 'thou' thee, thou traitor!
>
> One Quaker, in his memoirs, noted the abuse he'd received on account of
> thouing everyone (the Quakers did not believe in using the singular
> "you", they were very egalitarian).  He'd wrote about being beaten for
> thouing someone, and the person doing the beating shouted "Thou'st thou
> me, thou ill-bred clown?", he then noted "As if his breeding lay in
> using you to a singular".
I vaguely remember Voltaire using the Quakers' thouing people to humorous
effect in his _Letters on the English_ and their '100 Sects'.  (In fact, I had been
leafing through the book in a bookstore and found that section and bought it
because of that.  I was a little disappointed by it otherwise.  Voltaire is, I think,
a highly overblown personality of the Enlightenment.)

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Tom Wier   |     "Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."
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