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XFool wrote:An interesting sideline on this. I have a long memory from decades ago, the 1960s, when Feedback's predecessor column (Daedalus?) was mainly serious but had a light hearted end section. At the time the Vietnam war was in full flow, with its military terminology getting into everyday English, such as "escalation".
My (unreliable?) memory is the author of the NS column, while commenting on this, wondered if he could introduce his own equivalent very serious sounding word into the English language. He therefore proposed to launch the word "pivotal" into the world. The rest is history.
XFool wrote:An interesting sideline on this. I have a long memory from decades ago, the 1960s, when Feedback's predecessor column (Daedalus?) was mainly serious but had a light hearted end section. At the time the Vietnam war was in full flow, with its military terminology getting into everyday English, such as "escalation".
My (unreliable?) memory is the author of the NS column, while commenting on this, wondered if he could introduce his own equivalent very serious sounding word into the English language. He therefore proposed to launch the word "pivotal" into the world. The rest is history.
Interesting that the more recent take-off in usage seems to date from around the late 60s, early 70s!
No way now of verifying my (unreliable?) memory apart from an online search of all NS editions from 1964 - 66.
From 1970 onwards there was a steep increase, but if you look more closely at the hillock around 1960 (roll the mouse over the chart) you'll see that the peak was in 1956 and it then went downhill to the 1970 bottom.
ReformedCharacter wrote:One of my favourites is Canaan Banana:
Canaan Sodindo Banana was a Zimbabwean Methodist minister, theologian, and politician who served as the first President of Zimbabwe from 1980 to 1987. He was Zimbabwe's first head of state after the Lancaster House Agreement that led to the country’s independence
Possibly a proponent of rule by 'carrot and stick'.
RC
Surely the best name for a minister of religion was Cardinal Sin?
