Bonus Word of the Day

Sorry this has drifted away from academic texts but we have a bonus word of the day: Merit.

While reading the guidelines for my dissertation I came across this gem:
"6.13 Examiners shall have the discretion to award a degree with distinction to a candidate who has shown exceptional merit and a degree with merit to a candidate who has shown merit."

One would need to be quite meritorious apparently to be distinct.

Word of the day

While racism is never funny, it sometimes does serve as a way of learning new words to describe people in fantastically unflattering ways.  Here is today's sentence used when a British writer sought to do a study of Dhofar and its people in 1943.

"They are a small limbed, dark skinned race with well chiselled [sic] features, still in a nomadic and troglodytic state."

I needed to look up troglodytic, seeing as I could have easily mistaken it for Mesozoic or some other age of dinosaurs.  It apparently means:

(esp. in prehistoric times) a person who lived in a cave.

• a hermit.

• a person who is regarded as being deliberately ignorant or old-fashioned.

Even the word's origin was a bit "racist."

ORIGIN late 15th cent.: via Latin from Greek trōglodutēs, alteration of the name of an Ethiopian people, influenced by trōglē ‘hole.’

And that is my word of the day.

*Definition and origin courtesy of New Oxford American Dictionary

The British are So Polite

Sorry this is not an academic text. It is however a confidential message from the British Consul in Oman from Jan 3, 1965, discussing the lack of development plans for the country, following the discovery of oil.

"He [Chauncy] could not get the Sultan to embark on any serious planning. I do not believe he made any serious effort to do so and I blame him for this and his wife even more. She has a deep influence on the Sultan and keeps on saying that 'oil really must not be allowed to upset the happy little Omani donkey cart' - music to the Sultan's ears but a traumatic incitement to me to pull her hair out by the roots. One must not overdo this.  All of us who have to work with the Sultan know what a stubborn customer he is. It is just a pity that his closest 'advice' at this important time should come from an undistinguished couple who are charming, socially engaging and decent; but who basically share his views, are wholly steeped in a bygone age of India, and are in fact disinclined to tender advice. They are his humble agents and, for practical purposes his unquestioning and loyal servants. I sometimes wonder if this is precisely why the Sultan hired them."

This all came in the midst of a formal letter.