Timeline for The meaning of "a little Moor and how much it is"
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
16 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jan 29, 2019 at 9:34 | history | edited | Mari-Lou A | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
improved formatting, tags and made title a little more specific
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| Jan 29, 2019 at 9:01 | history | bumped | CommunityBot | This question has answers that may be good or bad; the system has marked it active so that they can be reviewed. | |
| Dec 24, 2018 at 21:28 | answer | added | fred2 | timeline score: 3 | |
| Dec 23, 2018 at 0:00 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackEnglishLL/status/1076628527548641285 | ||
| Dec 22, 2018 at 16:54 | history | edited | Glorfindel♦ | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
deleted 51 characters in body; edited title
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| Dec 22, 2018 at 16:45 | comment | added | Michael Harvey | If only to avoid the Latin-lesson interpretation (the one he actually intended). | |
| Dec 22, 2018 at 16:37 | comment | added | Michael Harvey | If the Duke had declined to join that bunch of twats, had it existed then, Munro would surely have capitalised its name. | |
| Dec 22, 2018 at 16:34 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | @MichaelHarvey: In this post-modern age, I have no problem finding something "witty" even if the aspect that I find cleverest today couldn't possibly have been known to the original writer. But ty for the info anyway - until I just looked it up, I assumed Mensa was much older, and that Saki would have known what he was writing. | |
| Dec 22, 2018 at 16:28 | comment | added | Michael Harvey | Munro/Saki isn't saying that. Mensa didn't exist in 1914 anyway. | |
| Dec 22, 2018 at 16:27 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | @Dan: It's obviously both (his peers would be satisfied to have mastered Latin declension and turned down an invitation to Mensa). I thought that was far wittier than the "little Moor" pun. | |
| Dec 22, 2018 at 16:26 | comment | added | Michael Harvey | Yes. As you have gathered, Saki is being witty about the two meanings of 'decline'. Declined an editorship when most boys his age were content to decline mensa. | |
| Dec 22, 2018 at 16:21 | comment | added | Dan Bron | @MichaelHarvey Oh! Declined “mensa” the Latin noun, as in inflect it for number of gender or whatever. Not “decline Mensa”, “refuse an invitation to join the high IQ society”. That’s how I’d originally read it. Thank you! | |
| Dec 22, 2018 at 16:19 | comment | added | Michael Harvey | @Dan Bron - mensa is Latin for "table", and was usually the first noun encountered by British children who were taught Latin at school, as I was starting in 1963. Mensa, mensa, mensam. To know mensa is not to know very much Latin. Mensa, a table; liber, a book; arbor, a tree. | |
| Dec 22, 2018 at 16:15 | comment | added | Dan Bron | What I want to know is what is with that random “a table” after “mensa”??? | |
| Dec 22, 2018 at 16:12 | comment | added | Dan Bron | It’s a pun but I don’t understand the thrust. It’s a play on the fact that Moors (a type of people) are found in Morocco, and the couplet starting “a little more and how much it is” from the Robert Browning poem By The Fire-side: english.stackexchange.com/questions/294443/… . Maybe the joke is Morocco is Moorish and little, but despite its littleness, it is “much”, having brought half Europe to the brink of war multiple times. “It’s little and Moorish and yet we’ve had much ado about it”. | |
| Dec 22, 2018 at 16:04 | history | asked | bandaid | CC BY-SA 4.0 |