Re: Items liable for seizure
Posted: Wed Mar 12, 2003 7:06 pm
Like your reply, it's called alliteration, as in 'seventy senseless censors'.
A phatic is a practically meaningles phrase or particle, such as 'Good morning': it could mean you wish your interlocutor a good morning, or that it is a good morning (for either, both or everybody), or a dismissal to an unwanted person, or any number of other unspoken concepts. More often it is used to cover the conversational awkwardness most humans feel on encountering a stranger.
[For the rest of this essay, see my book '1000 things you wished to God you'd never asked, and didn't want to understand anyway': or alternatively, Gandalf's explanation of this phenomenon to Bilbo, in 'The Fellowship of the Ring']
A phatic is a practically meaningles phrase or particle, such as 'Good morning': it could mean you wish your interlocutor a good morning, or that it is a good morning (for either, both or everybody), or a dismissal to an unwanted person, or any number of other unspoken concepts. More often it is used to cover the conversational awkwardness most humans feel on encountering a stranger.
[For the rest of this essay, see my book '1000 things you wished to God you'd never asked, and didn't want to understand anyway': or alternatively, Gandalf's explanation of this phenomenon to Bilbo, in 'The Fellowship of the Ring']