He was not fond of flowery but imprecise words, and he would rather have a simple word work hard to convey the required meaning. His students always knew that if they tried to impress him with some fanciful term or trendy neologism, most likely they would be asked to clarify precisely what they mean in simple terms, until it became apparent to them that there was no escape from clarity and precision.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
Pages
▼
Friday, June 04, 2021
Clarity and Precision
Editors' Preface to Douglas M. MacDowell, Studies on Greek Law, Oratory
and Comedy, edd. Ilias Arnaoutoglou et al. (London: Routledge, 2018), p. x: