Scandal

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Dr. Goodword
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Scandal

Postby Dr. Goodword » Sat May 29, 2010 11:04 pm

• scandal •

Pronunciation: skæn-dêl • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun

Meaning: 1. An incident that brings embarrassment or disgrace to the person initiating it. 2. A kerfuffle that disturbs or upsets a group of people.

Notes: Today's word comes with an adjective, scandalous, and a verb, scandalize "to cause a scandal, to offend", as to scandalize the whole town by burning the flag in public. This word opens the way for others, like scandalization and scandalizer.

In Play: Inappropriate behavior is always a scandal of some level of magnitude: "Maud Lynn Dresser caused a scandal when she appeared at the bishop's investiture wearing a low-cut dress and no bra." It is to the point that bribery and adultery no longer cause scandals among our political leaders. Pity. The rest of us pay for even the smallest infraction of social etiquette: "When Harley broke wind during the Sunday morning sermon, it caused a scandal that everyone in the church still talks about."

Word History: English made this nifty little word by simply trimming the final E from Middle French scandale, a hand-me-down from Latin scandalum "a trap, temptation". The Latin word is itself a makeover of Greek skandalon "a trap" from skandalizein "to make stumble". This word comes from the Proto-Indo-European root *skand- "jump". Old French had another variant of the Latin word scandalum: esclandre "scandalous statement". Old English borrowed this version of the same word, too, carefully removing the E and C and passing it on to us slander. English excels at borrowing the same word at different stages of its development for different English words. (It would be scandalous of me to forget to thank T. C. Ward for suggesting today's excellent Good Word.)
• The Good Dr. Goodword

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Slava
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Re: SCANDAL

Postby Slava » Tue May 20, 2014 5:45 pm

Nearly 4 years old and no one's had a thing to say. Even with all the scandals perpetually swirling about the US political scene. Scandalous!

Maybe it's because we have become so inured to scandal that not much is worthy of the term anymore?
Life is like playing chess with chessmen who each have thoughts and feelings and motives of their own.

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call_copse
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Re: SCANDAL

Postby call_copse » Wed May 21, 2014 6:30 am

Does anyone think the internet will necessarily change the nature of scandal?

http://xkcd.com/1370/

We may certainly need to be more explicitly forgiving of youthful transgressions...
Iain

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Slava
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Re: SCANDAL

Postby Slava » Wed May 21, 2014 6:39 am

Perhaps in the sense of personal scandal, yes. Some possible scandals will have the pictorial evidence to show they weren't much of anything, where as others will either be proven or blown out of proportion.

One danger that I find truly scandalous, in the disgraceful sense, is image-altering, aka PhotoShopping. While doctoring pictures has been going on since the beginning of photography, what people can do, and do, now is truly scandalous. It makes it rather difficult to know just what and who to believe.
Life is like playing chess with chessmen who each have thoughts and feelings and motives of their own.

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call_copse
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Re: Scandal

Postby call_copse » Fri May 23, 2014 6:31 am

Sorry, no real reply to you Slava, just another article I enjoyed on this subject:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... orgiveness

Perhaps we will have to forgive other things, like being doxxed?
Iain


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