Thursday, March 29, 2007
Hobby-Horses
Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy:
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Nay, if you come to that, Sir, have not the wisest of men in all ages, not excepting Solomon himself, -- have they not had their Hobby-Horses; -- their running horses, -- their coins and their cockle-shells, their drums and their trumpets, their fiddles, their pallets, -- their maggots and their butterflies? -- and so long as a man rides his Hobby-Horse peaceably and quietly along the King's highway, and neither compels you or me to get up behind him, -- pray, Sir, what have either you or I to do with it?I don't collect maggots or butterflies, but I do collect examples of asyndetic privative adjectives. Here's my latest catch, from Arrian, Discourses of Epictetus 3.3.10: ἀκώλυτον ἀνανάγκαστον ἀπαραπόδιστον = unhindered, unconstrained, unentangled.
