Hi, Roy!  Recently you wrote in a message to Ardith Hinton:

AH>  In informal speech North Americans often say "hung".
AH>  But then I'm not sure what they mean when they say
AH>  someone was "hung, drawn, and quartered".  ;-)

RW>  That phrase is usually said as - hanged, drawn and
RW>  quartered.


          Ah.  I had seen it written that way, but not often enough to be sure
it wasn't an overcorrection....  :-)



RW>  It originated back in time to King Henry III when people
RW>  were actually hanged, but not to death, then emasculated,
RW>  disembowelled,


          Makes sense to me.  For those who aren't native speakers of English,
the umpteenth definition of "draw" in my favourite dictionary is "eviscerate".

          Students are often advised not to use a long word where a short word
will do.  But I reckon it may be easier for people learning a foreign language
to grasp the meaning of polysyllabic Latin-based words such as "disembowelled"
and "eviscerated" than to decipher common words with many definitions....  :-)



RW>  beheaded then quarted (literally cut into 4 pieces).


          I figured you'd probably know... or you'd look it up.  What confused
me was that the business of being "drawn & quartered" sounds like what happens
to animals in a slaughterhouse.  Yes, it is undignified.  I guess it was meant
to be when used as a capital punishment but couldn't help wondering how far to
take the analogy if people were "hung".  Thanks for the clarification....  :-)



RW>  Women were spared this indignity and merely burnt at
RW>  the stake.


          IOW, as a poor elderly widow who ate the wrong mushrooms because she
had nothing else to eat & then seemed a bit strange... as we now know may have
happened re those witchcraft trials of yesteryear... I'd get off lightly.  :-Q



RW>  Is that the same as the left coast?  (Californians,
RW>  Oregonians and Washingtonians are well known for
RW>  their liberalism)


          The pundits keep telling us BC politics are unique.  I'm inclined to
believe them because many people here... and/or their not-so-distant ancestors
... emigrated from Z2, arrived Back East, and continued moving west until they
bumped into the Pacific Ocean.  (James Fenimore Cooper's Pathfinder might have
done the same thing nowadays.)  One might think from watching the evening news
that we have a disproportionate number of tree huggers & whatnot.  But because
there is a provincial election coming up in May, the same pundits also tell us
that folks generally regarded as left of centre have in fact been elected to a
majority of legislative seats only 2-3 times within the last 40 years....  ;-)




--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+
 * Origin: Wits' End, Vancouver CANADA (1:153/716)