Cheek or Chutzpah

[Zeno]

I did a quick purview through some of the more delusional threads that I missed of late and decided to bung up a few holes in the shoddy barrel called the other topics forum.

I recently purchased the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (only two large volumes) and according to the brainy red robed ones in England –

Chutzpah: Shameless audacity, gall

Cheek: Impertinent speech; cool confidence, effrontery; insolence


Some of the same flavor to the definitions, I think, but different people may have their own special tradition or topping to put on the standard meaning. The whole balls thing is on a different wavelength, in my opinion.

And speaking of cheek or chutzpah or effrontery or insolence or whatever you wish to call it; I was recently hounding the library and ran across this tidbit of information that needs splashed into the gutter of important knowledge we all lap at every day. The following insolence matter is from - “Mencken and Sara, A life in Letters", edited by Marion Rodgers. It is a footnote to a particular letter.


“Mencken had the habit of lifting bibles from hotel rooms and presenting them to friends, inscribing them with, ‘Compliments from the Author’”.



A noble gesture methinks. By the way, H. L. Mencken wrote a scholarly work called “The American Language” that is regarded, by some, as one of the best works on American English and is still published. It is well worth consulting on many aspects of the American language. Though I must add that the pendants that foul the cogs of education cast jeers at this work they all, no doubt, slobber over it in back rooms when they run aground on a particularly sticky matter.

Jab that in your eyeball.

Shalom,

-Zeno (Mr. Chutzpah)