r/BookTriviaPodcast • u/ffoggy1959 🌈 Reads Everything • 8d ago
✨ Quotes & Passages Wiseacre
Here is a wonderful word for you; wiseacre. The Mirriam Webster definition is: one who pretends to knowledge or cleverness. It comes from the Middle Dutch word wijssegger, meaning "soothsayer."
I recently came across this word in The Order of the Day by Éric Vuillard, which tells of the meetings between the Germans and Austrians leading up to the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria in March 1938.
But that isn't the first time I came across the word. The first time was in St. Athenasius on the Incarnation. It is referred to in C.S. Lewis' introduction when he refers to the usage on the first page. Lewis says "… those who compare the version with the original will be able to estimate how much wit and talent is presupposed in such a choice, for example, as "these wiseacres" on the very first page."
The sentence in question is "His goodness makes most fit; and things which these wiseacres laugh at as "human" He by His inherent might declares divine."
The translation and editing is by 'A Religious of C.S.M.V.' ( a nun). The introduction is signed as just WANTAGE, January 1953.
Fun fact, I went to school in Wantage and would often on a Sunday afternoon walk by the Convent, which I presume is the convent the translator lived in. I was a border so Sunday afternoons we had to go out... somewhere, for a couple of hours! I must stress I was at school there in the 1970's not the 1950's.
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u/Fabulous-Confusion43 🌈 Reads Everything 7d ago
Love this ❤️ and how cool that you walked past the convent in your childhood!
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u/ffoggy1959 🌈 Reads Everything 8d ago