Monday, July 16, 2007

Word of the Day: Snit

So now we're in a snit, are we? Is that what naturally follows - when one is snippy, one then has a snit?

Main Entry: snit
Pronunciation: 'snit
Function: noun
Etymology: origin unknown
Date: 1939
: a state of agitation snit>

From World Wide Words we learn more about the word snit.

It’s a neat turn of phrase, but to write that does indeed suggest you don’t know what it means. A snit is a fit of rather childish temper, a tantrum or perhaps a sulk. Though word meanings arouse many emotions in subscribers, snits are not usually among them.

Several people have in the past asked where this word comes from, so this is the perfect moment to look into it. All the dictionaries bar one I’ve consulted dismiss the matter with their dispiriting stock phrase “origin unknown”. The exception is Jonathon Green’s Cassell Dictionary of Slang, which mentions the name of Clare Boothe Luce.

Clare Boothe was a talented woman, variously an editor, playwright, politician, journalist and diplomat. The Saturday Review of Literature of 23 December 1939 remarked about snit that “nobody in Georgia seems ever to have heard of either the word or the state of being until Miss Clare Boothe isolated and defined it”. This must have been in reference to her play Kiss the Boys Goodbye of the previous year, in which she used it. Through that play (a successful one that was listed as one of the ten best of the year), she most certainly popularised it, and may well have invented it (most dictionaries are cautious about the origin because nobody can actually prove she did).

From World Wide Words.

Well, the idea of transferring one's orders from one Anglican province to another Anglican province constitutes "abandoning the communion" and the draconian punishment of defrocking tells us that we are indeed entering into a very public and very clear illustration of not only the deepening division within the Episcopal Church itself, but in the Anglican Communion. A sitting TEC bishop is threatening Anglican clergy with abandonment.

Perhaps they should become Muslim instead.

The question remains for us who are the laity - who is really abandoning the communion, who has been warned over and over and put in time out and given a deadline for taking actions that are indeed tearing apart the communion?

And what are we going to do about it?

Ah, but we're just having a snit.


Anonymous said...

I am just finding this whole Muslim issue insane! I have long been against the term "Jews for Jesus" because if you are Jewish and accept Jesus then you become a Christian. Which is fine, just don't call yourself a Jew. The point I used to make was that you wouldn't find Christians for Mohammed. I guess I was wrong there. How can anyone argue for keeping this woman in the Espiscopal Priesthood? She needs to be told to either recant or leave. Very simple.

BB, your earlier point about the Catholics, is a bit misleading, in my humble opinion, becuase the current Pope has gone back to the argument that the Catholic Church is above all other Christian Denominations, so even the most evangelical of churches isn't going to be in communion.

I do agree, snit is an adult acting like a child. Oh wait, much of what I have seen has been adults acting like children on both sides. Everyone has become so entreached that they can't see the other side has any validity at all. If the ABC had any sense at all he would invite everyone so that they could sit down and follow the biblical commandment: “COME, LET US REASON TOGETHER”

Isaiah 1:18

Similarly tradtional liberals would say that those who choose to change to the Nigerian Church or any other have that right. They have the right to worship as they see fit. Why is it okay for the West to have evangalized the rest of the world but woe to the rest of the world if they try to come here. And let's stop patronizing Africa, I saw this editorial in the Post yesterday and it spoke volumes to me:

Stop Trying To 'Save' Africa

By Uzodinma Iweala
Sunday, July 15, 2007; B07














Unknown said...

Careful, Mel - folks might think you're in a snit.

bb ;-)

PS Great post.