On Thursday 22 November 2007, Will Stevens wrote:
> The recent discussion centred round 'The Army of a Dream' has motivated >me
to reread 'Traffics and Discoveries'. In 'The Captive', I came across >this
sentence, put into the mouth of Zigler, the American prisoner:
>
> "There I sat, the rankest breed of unreconstructed American citizen,
>
> Isn't this an extraordinarily modern use of the adjective
> 'unreconstructed', in the sense 'unreformed', or 'not reconciled to current
> political or social mores'? Or has the word been used in this way in
> American English for longer than it has been on this side of the Atlantic?
>
You could say that, yes. "Unreconstructed" in American English is a specific
reference to Southerners who opposed the policies of Reconstruction imposed
on the South by the North after our Civil War.
The term came into use almost at once at the end of the war, so it has been
around for nearly 150 years over here.
While it can be used by extension in the more general sense you mention, I
think most Americans who use it that way are well aware that it's a metaphor.
--
Meredith Dixon <[log in to unmask]>
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