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Thu 30 May, 2013 09:43 pm
The student wrote:
Did you perpetrate this terrible sentence?
Is the student correct in using the word perpetrate?
@oristarA,
Yes. The word is normally applied to crimes, so the unusal context adds an element of cuteness. That is, asking the question implies the sentence is a crime.
@roger,
wrong...used to speak of things that the speaker thinks should not exist, not necessarily rising to an agreed crime.
@hawkeye10,
Huh? Geez, Hawkeye, the man asks "What's 2 + 2 and you tell him it's squirrel".
"Did you perpetrate this terrible sentence?
Did he mean to say "perpetuate?"
If so, I think the student meant to ask if you endorsed, approved, or continued using this sentence or phrase.
@roger,
Yes. Roger has it: by "perpetrating" a sentence one commits the
crime of writing it. Cute is the word for it.
The word 'perpetrate' used to mean "completely accomplish' but in modern times is most often used in connection with crimes, but many dictionaries give an additional wider meaning of accomplishing something considered in bad or harmful, including in a jocular way puns or jokes, especially practical jokes. Critics often use 'perpetrate' in discussions of bad works of art. I am not quite sure in what sense Anton Chekhov's translator used the word here in "A Play"... I suspect possible self-deprecation on the part of the lady playwright.
Quote:You see . . . (the lady cast down her eyes and turned redder) I know your talents . . . your views, Pavel Vassilyevitch, and I have been longing to learn your opinion, or more exactly . . . to ask your advice. I must tell you I have perpetrated a play, my first-born -- pardon pour l'expression! -- and before sending it to the Censor I should like above all things to have your opinion on it.
Nervously, with the flutter of a captured bird, the lady fumbled in her skirt and drew out a fat manuscript.
@roger,
Quote:Huh? Geez, Hawkeye, the man asks "What's 2 + 2 and you tell him it's squirrel".
That's a classic. That's one of the funniest things i've ever read here.
@oristarA,
oristarA wrote:What does "pour l'expression! " mean?
Pardon pour l'expression! is French for "pardon me for the expression!" (i.e. first-born, which is thus acknowledged as an unusual way of putting the idea). In the 19th century many upper-class Russians (and others including English) used French as well as their native tongue.
Pardon pour l'expression--it's French, and it means [Please] Excuse the manner of speaking. Educated Russians, before 1917, always learned to speak French, and it was the language of society. Even when speaking Russian, they would mix French expressions into their speech. The characters in Tolstoy's War and Peace litter their conversations with French phrases and proverbs.
Cool stuff.
The Russians were still not screwed by stupid Lenin.
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