Expect the Unexpected

For someone who thought "demure" meant "slutty", an excerpt from Fowler's Modern English Usuage (2nd edition revised by Sir Ernest Gowers): this little quotation from the entry on "irony" which after the discussion of Socratic and dramatic irony provides this enlightenment

And the double audience for the irony of Fate? Nature persuades most of us that the course of events is within wide limits foreseeable, that things will follow their usual course and that violent outrage on our sense of the probable or reasonable need not be looked for. These 'most of us' are the uncomprehending outsiders; the elect or inner circle with whom Fate shares her amusement at our consternation are the few to whom it is not an occasional maxim, but a living conviction, that what happens is the unexpected.

I do count among the unexpected the notion that demure should somehow convey salaciousness.

And so for day 1039
17.10.2009