word. It properly means the renewed inflammation of a wound, and so the breaking out again of an epidemic, &c. It may reasonably be used of revolutionary or silly opinions: to use it of persons or their histories is absurd.
A colonel on the General Staff, while arguing for a continuation of the struggle on metaphysical grounds, admitted to me that even if the Russians regained Manchuria they would never succeed in colonizing it.... The Bourse Gazette goes still further. It says that war for any definite purpose ceased with the fall of Mukden, and that its continuation is apparent not from any military or naval actions, but from the feeling of depression which is weighing upon all Russians and the reports of the peace overtures.—Times.
We can suggest no substitute for metaphysical. Though we have long known metaphysics for a blessed and mysterious word, this is our first meeting with it in war or politics. The 'apparent continuation', however, seems darkly to hint at the old question between phenomena and real existence, so that perhaps we actually are in metaphysics all the time.
In a word, M. Witte was always against all our aggressive measures in the Far East.... M. Witte, who was always supported by Count Lamsdorff, has no share in the responsibility of all that has transpired.—Times. (happened)
As a synonym for become known,[1] transpire is journalistic and ugly, but may pass: as a synonym for happen, it is a bad blunder, but not uncommon.
It was, of course, Mrs. Sedley's opinion that her son would demean himself by a marriage with an artist's daughter.—Thackeray.
The actors who raddle their faces and demean themselves on the stage.—Stevenson. (lower, degrade)
To demean oneself, with adverb of manner attached, is to behave in that manner. The other use has probably arisen by a natural confusion with the adjective mean; one suspects that it has crept into literature by being used in intentional parody of vulgar speech, till it was forgotten that it was parody. But perhaps when a word has been given full citizen rights by Thackeray and Stevenson, it is too late to expel it.
- ↑ As in the second quotation from The Times on p.4.
