SP and I watched some Veronica Mars season one the other night and in honor of all the TV Tuesdays I've neglected and the Wordy Wenseday that is today, I thought I'd share this quote from the show.
Assistant Principal Clemmons: Logan, can I have a word?
Logan: Anthropomorphic. All yours, big boy.
hee! I wonder if I will find this blatent disrespect towards school officials this funny once I'm a teacher. Probably, as long as its not directed at me.
anthropomorphic: suggesting human characteristics for animals or inanimate things
2 comments:
Anthropomorphic is a great word, indeed. A related phrase is "pathetic fallacy," a term coined by John Ruskin in 1856 in a portion of his book Modern Painters.
When an artist imbues an inanimate object with human emotions, he's committing the pathetic fallacy. It's not really "pathetic" like "you're a pathetic loser", more of a "pathos means sympathy" kind of thing.
Ruskin used the term to criticize, being no fan of the technique. About the following couplet:
The spendthrift crocus, bursting through the mould
Naked and shivering, with his cup of gold
Ruskin wrote: This is very beautiful, and yet very untrue. The crocus is not a spendthrift, but a hardy plant; its yellow is not gold, but saffron. How is it that we enjoy so much the having it put into our heads that it is anything else than a plain crocus?
While people tend not to agree with Ruskin that the pathetic fallacy is a bad thing, they do keep using his turn of phrase.
Incidentally, the poem that Ruskin above criticizes is Spring by noted jurist Oliver Wendall Holmes. Yes, he wrote poetry.
Actually Matt, Oliver Wendall Holmes the poet was the father of the noted jurist, Oliver Wendall Holmes, Jr. The reason I know this is that I memorized a Holmes poem in high school and ran across that tidbit. Although Holmes Jr.'s dissent in Abrams is poetry to me.
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