“What do you know of the science of optics?”
“I know of governors of places, and seneschals of castles, and sheriffs of counties, and many like small offices and titles of honor, but him you call the Science of Optics I have not heard of before; peradventure it is a new dignity.”
“Yes, in this country.”
(Hank Morgan to unnamed nobleman,
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court)
In this country, ‘Optics” has come to mean “Appearances”. While there are some English usages that annoy me no end, like using ‘Decimate’ to mean something other than “To tithe”.
but I kind of like “optics”. It isn’t a misapplied word like “Decimate”, used by people ignorant of it’s real meaning, or a misunderstood phrase like “Out of pocket” which means living on ones own resources instead of “out of touch’ which is the way it is now most commonly used. No, “Optics” is a sort of a twist of the original word, the concept easily recognizeable by anyone who speaks the language well, just like the bard did in do many of his plays. To take a word or part of a word and give it a twist in the way you’re using it so it means something very similar but in a whole new way… that seems very akin to the way Shakespeare used the language to his own purposes, and I think it’s OK.
Yep, and those ‘optics’ are pretty much all bad… :-)
OTOH: as a telescope maker with a mirror grinding machine and someone who has messed with “real” optics, using that word in place of “appearances” has always bothered me!
But I can be too literal.
Each to his own … as they say.
Gray: I have walked the barrel myself, and I get your distress, but English IS an evolving language. I like “Optics” a lot better than I like “Ax”
People say “out of pocket” when what they mean to say is “out of the pocket”. I think. I can’t find a reference, but the latter I have always understood to mean “incommunicado due to not being anywhere I can be reached”. The former, I’ve always understood in the context of “out of [my] pocket expenses”, usually to be reimbursed.
I always thought that “decimate” was Latin for the act of killing every tenth soldier in a Roman army as punishment for cowardice or incompetence in battle.
I would die a happy man if only I could see Congress , the Executive and Judicial Branches including appointed and hired personell all decimated, starting with his Imperial Unholiness Fauxbama I.
Gerry N.