The words covered in this article are intimation and intimate, grievous, respite, universal, candor and candid, and insidious. Previously done words that will reoccur today are deplorable, promulgation, articulated, implore, obscurity, conception, explicit, imply, dissemination, contention, and indifference.
Jeremy Bentham (1747 – 1832) was an English philosopher and legal reformer. He was a passionate advocate for making law more accessible to common people. At the time, laws were not even neatly written down and arranged into subject-wise books, as they are at present, but were mostly articulated only through judicial decisions. It was not uncommon for judges to decide during the course of hearing a case that a particular type of action was unlawful and that it ought to be given such and such punishment. Such judge-made laws were usually available only to the judges and lawyers.
Bentham deplored this state of affairs.
The verb deplore means to criticize very strongly; to feel grief or regret over something.
In Sunday Read 2, The Storyteller, you have learnt the adjective form of this word, deplorable.
Origin: Latin de-, completely + plorare, to cry, weep
The Latin prefix de- usually means ‘down’ (for example, in the word ‘descend’, to go down). The intensified form of ‘down’ would be ‘down to the bottom’, hence ‘completely’ (for example, if you have mined the earth down to the bottom, you have mined it completely). This more intense sense of ‘completely’ is the one used in making up deplore.
When you are so disappointed with how your legal system operates that your heart weeps completely, you deplore the legal system.
The other words from the root plorare are ‘explore’ and implore.
- The word ‘explore’ comes from the Latin explorare, which means ‘to cry out’ (ex-, means ‘out’) and originally denoted the action of a hunter giving out a loud cry to communicate with fellow hunters as they all searched for game in thick woods. Later, explorare started being used in the more general sense of ‘going in search of something’ and this was the sense that was carried over into the English word ‘explore.’
- The verb implore means to beg for something. Origin: Latin im-, upon + plorare, to cry. You have encountered this word in Sunday Read 1. The sentence was:
- “Mini’s mother would intervene, and implore me to ‘beware of that man.’”
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Lamenting the obscurity of laws to the people who were governed by them, Jeremy Bentham wrote (read the quote first and then we will discuss the GRE words in it),
“They tell him he ought to know [the law]; they say of him that he does know it; they give him no means of knowing it; they see he does not know it; they do nothing to make him know it; they do every thing to keep him from knowing it; they have brought it into a state in which it is impossible for him to know it; . . . they say his ignorance of it is no excuse; and, in all imaginable ways, they punish him for not knowing it.
By no military commander was it ever supposed, so much as for a moment, that, by keeping his orders in his pocket, or mumbling them to himself, or laying them up with a houseful of other orders upon a shelf, where any man that chose to pay for them might have them, he could hope either to gain an advantage over, or so much as defend himself against, the enemy.
By no master of a family, by no old woman, mistress, or housekeeper of a family, was it ever so much as supposed, that, by any such mode of promulgation (if promulgation it could be called,) the daily and hourly business of any the most inconsiderable private family could ever be carried on. . .
Every law unpromulgated is . . . an act of tyranny. . . Every law insufficiently promulgated, is an act of tyranny as towards all those in whose conception and remembrance, by reason of such insufficiency, it fails to have implanted itself. . .
Legislation—genuine legislation—has her trumpet: instead of a trumpet, the law of jurisprudence employs a sword—a sword, or a rod: such, and such alone, are the instruments of promulgation that ever are or can be employed by what is called common law.
Punishment instead of instruction—punishment without instruction, without warning —such is the form in which the law of jurisprudence gives all its lessons.
When a man has a dog to teach, he falls upon him and beats him: the animal takes note in his own mind of the circumstances in which he has been beaten, and the intimation thus received becomes, in the mind of the dog, a rule of common law.
Such is the law—such the . . . grievous and deplorable tyranny, to which . . . the legislator abandons the community entrusted to his charge. Men are treated like dogs—they are beaten without respite, and without mercy; and out of one man’s beating, another man is left to derive instruction as he can.”
Jeremy Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Volume sixth, Chapter 3, Section 1
Intimation
The noun intimation means a hint or a suggestion. The verb intimate means to hint or to suggest.
The word intimate is most commonly used as an adjective, in the sense of close, deep or very private. Your intimate friend is someone who is very close to you, whom you can trust with your innermost thoughts. If you have intimate knowledge of a subject, you know it to its innermost core. If you wrote an intimate letter to somebody, you shared very private thoughts in it that you would not want read by a third person.
All these words come from the Latin intimus, which means ‘innermost.’
When you intimate (used here as a verb) someone, you do not inform them of your thoughts explicitly and clearly, but merely imply them, merely hint at them, leaving it to the other person to guess what is in your heart from the clues you have dropped.
Bentham’s choice of the word intimation is perfect in the above context, because according to him, the law does not state explicitly and clearly if an action X is legal or not, but instead, merely hints at the illegality of X by punishing someone for doing X, leaving it up to the citizens to guess, from the severity of the punishment given to that person, how serious a crime judges consider X to be.
Grievous
The adjective grievous means serious, causing great grief or pain.
The word comes from the same root as ‘grief.’
Respite
The noun respite means temporary rest or relief.
Jeremy Bentham was not one who was satisfied by having pointed out a problem. He also thought deeply about what the solution might be; how should laws be promulgated so that they could truly reach the minds of the common people? A few of his suggestions, excerpted from his essay Of Promulgation of the Laws and Promulgation of the Reasons Thereof, are presented below. I will insert the definition of a new GRE word at the end of the paragraph in which it first occurs and then continue with Bentham’s quote.
“The dissemination of the laws ought to be regulated by the number of persons whom they concern. The universal code ought to be promulgated to all. The particular codes ought to be set before the classes to which they respectively refer. A road-book is useful, but it is of most use to those who are to be guided by its regulations, and who wish to travel. . .”
Universal
The adjective universal means related with the universe; applicable to all, general.
“METHODS OF PROMULGATING THE UNIVERSAL CODE.
It ought to be made the chief book; one of the first objects of instruction in all schools. . . The most important parts of it might be committed to memory . . . The pupils might translate the national code into the dead languages; they might translate them into the living languages; they might turn them into verse . . . In this manner, before sixteen years of age, without hindrance to any other studies, the pupils in public schools would become more conversant with the laws of their country, than those lawyers at present are, whose hair has grown grey in the contentions of the bar. . .
Churches.
Why should not the reading of the laws form, as it did among the Jews, a part of divine service? Would not the association of ideas be beneficial? . . . Would it not add dignity to the ceremony, if the laws respecting parents and children were read upon the performance of baptism? and the laws respecting husbands and wives at the time of marriage?
This public reading in places of worship would be, as respects the most ignorant classes, a means of instruction, as little costly as it would be interesting . . .
Translations.
If the nation which ought to obey the same laws is composed of different peoples, speaking different languages, it is proper that an authentic translation of the code should be made into each of these languages.
It is also proper that it should be translated into the languages of the principal nations of Europe. The interests of these nations are so mingled, that they have all occasion to understand the law of the others. Besides, it would prevent a stranger from falling into those faults which he might otherwise commit through ignorance of the law, and also guard him from the snares which otherwise might be laid for him by abusing his ignorance. Hence would arise security for commerce, and confidence in transactions among foreign nations. It is a proceeding called for by candor and honesty.
‘Have you anything contrary to the ordinances of the king?’ is the foolish and insidious question asked at many custom-houses of the stranger, who, perhaps for the first time, enters the kingdom. How should he know those ordinances? He might reply . . .
‘Show me your ordinances in my own language, and then, if I deceive you, punish me.’
Candor
The noun candor means honesty, frankness. Its adjective form is candid, which means honest and frank.
Insidious
The adjective insidious means working against you in a silent and deadly manner; intending to trap you and do harm.
Origin: Latin in-, upon + sedere, to sit => ‘to sit in wait for the prey to walk into the trap.’
With this, we are at the end of Day 25. Here are a few more usage examples for the words you have learnt today:
- The educationist deplored the indifference of the government as the government schools, which were the only avenue of education for the poor, went from bad to worse all over the state.
- In moments of perplexity and doubt, people of faith pray to God on what they ought to do, with the full confidence that they will receive an intimation of His will, through a dream perhaps or through the song of a rare bird or the wind blowing a flower to their feet.
- “How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.” Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
- The sudden rain in the evening provided a welcome respite to people suffering the intense heat.
- “To be candid, in Middlemarch phraseology, meant, to use an early opportunity of letting your friends know that you did not take a cheerful view of their capacity, their conduct, or their position; and a robust candor never waited to be asked for its opinion.” George Eliot, Middlemarch
- It is a universal truth that one reaps what one sows.
- The people got no respite from power cuts even in the monsoons.
- “Sometimes there is no happy choice, Sam, only one less grievous than the others.” George R.R. Martin, A Feast for Crows
- A disease whose beginning stages remain undetected because it does not have obvious symptoms at first is called an insidious disease. The patient has no idea that the disease has already taken root in him or her and is growing deadlier by the day. Diabetes, hypertension and cancer are all examples of such initially-silent killers.
- “To be alone is the fate of all great minds—a fate deplored at times, but still always chosen as the less grievous of two evils.” Arthur Schopenhauer
- “Candor could not be more crucial to our creative process. . . because early on, all of our movies suck . . . Pixar films are not good at first, and our job is to make them so—to go, as I say, “from suck to not-suck.” . . . We dare to attempt these stories, but we don’t get them right on the first pass. . . This is as it should be. Creativity has to start somewhere, and we are true believers in the power of bracing, candid feedback and the iterative process–reworking, reworking, and reworking again.” Ed Catmull, Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration