Never doubt Great Britain’s word. She is wise and trustworthy; have no fear.
—King Hussein, May 1917
perfidious: deceitful and untrustworthy.
Albion: a poetic or literary term for Britain or England
Having recently read Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East, I was tickled by a line in a Masterpiece Theater episode I saw on Netflix. Some Arabs were caught spying on a British firm, and the leader was unapologetic — Arabs were no longer as naive as they had been in Lawrence’s day. “Perfidious Albion,” he said.
Perfidious is now one of my favorite words. Do you have any favorites?
February 12, 2014
Disastrous. I am using it more often than I would like to because our national general elections are due in a couple of months’ time and we are already in the electioneering mode. Almost all figures being bandied about are, in my opinion, disasters waiting to happen.
“Politics is the art of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.” J K Galbraith.
It’s hard to disagree!
My favorite is S – – -, a word I hate but better than F- – – . Has replaced Damn. I’d like to be the lady I was raised to be, but these words muttered whenever I drop something helps.
If it works, it works. 🙂
I hate the S – – – word so much that I’m going to change to the F – – – word. I might even revert to Damn. Or be like Jean & just laugh. 😀
well. you know i like the innocuous ‘alas’ and ‘alack’ from reading the peanut.
but i have always liked perfunctory. and incorrigible. someone called me incorrigible once! i took it as a compliment. LOLOL!!! xo
I was called incorrigible once. I knew it wasn’t good but had to look it up.
I would take it as a compliment too! Yay, us incorrigible types!
Because of Snoopy, another of my favorite words is Irrepressible.
I don’t think I have any particular, non swear word that I love to bandy about…
But when I’m in essay mode, there are huge amount of words that I need to find a replacement for – from sentence starts to saying the same thing in a different way. I happen to have some great lists which occasionally seem to work!
I’m working on the return; next week I am taking part in a student panel relating to disability issues at Uni. I return around March 3 so it’s getting ever closer. I just ordered the paperback textbook for one of my courses from the Book Depository with free shipping to NZ – hoping to see that before the session kicks off on the 7th…
Time to get my academic word smith out the archival brain sponge…
Yes, we need variety when writing formally. March 3 isn’t that far off!