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I do hope you have read 'The "Je ne sais quoi"', by Richard Scholar (OUP, 2006). It's a wonderful book. (To declare an interest: he is a family friend, and once a pupil when he was about 15.) Penny McC. Original Message: ----------------- From: Charlie Butler [log in to unmask] Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2010 10:08:16 +0100 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: SIDNEY-SPENSER: Renaissance rhetoric question On 16 July 2010 00:52, Dennis Moore <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > 20 words for snow? Usually viewed as an urban legend. > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimo_words_for_snow > Mind you, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is alive and well elsewhere. I recently heard a BBC journalist mention, as if it were a measure of how endemic corruption was in Afghanistan, that they have a dozen words meaning "bribe". (By contrast, the fact that we have kick-back, bung, back-hander, sweetener, inducement, tip, pay-off, tribute, protection money, hush money, palm-grease, fix, etc, is just a measure of the inexhaustible richness of the English language.) But I rather like the irony that we have to turn to French to say "Je ne sais quoi." Sorry if that was off-topos. Charlie -- Website: www.charlesbutler.co.uk Blog: http://steepholm.livejournal.com/ -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web.com – What can On Demand Business Solutions do for you? http://link.mail2web.com/Business/SharePoint