A Dictionary of Cont..

hackneyed four hundred years ago. And it has
not grown fresher since.
sinus. The plural is sinuses or sinus, not sini.
Sioux. The singular and plural are both Sioux.
Originally this word was plural, but it may now
be used also as a singular, as in one Sioux or
three Sioux.
sir; sire. Both of these words are now obsolete to
describe a lord (as in Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight or The Sire de Maletroit’s Door). Sir
today is a respectful or formal term of address
to a man. Though formerly in almost universal
use in the United States, it was being discontinued
until World Wars I and II gave it renewed
life. Sir was a mandatory term of address for
all enlisted men to commissioned officers and
for commissioned officers to their superior oflicers
and the habit carried over, at least for
some years, into civilian life.
In England Sir, capitalized, is still used as the
title of a knight or a baronet (Sir Winsron
Churchill, Sir John Falstaff). Where the holder
of this title is also a military man, the military
title precedes the Sir and the honorific initials
of any order the man may belong to succeed
the full name (General Sir Reginald Pinney,
K.C.B.). In America, as in England, sir is sometimes
used as an ironic or humorous title of
respect (Sir Oracle, Sir critic). The single word
Sir is the most formal salutation in a letter addressed
to one man.
Sir is sometimes used colloquially in America
as nothing more than an intensive adverb, to
make Yes or No more emphatic (Yes sir, she’s
my baby. No sir! You don’t catch me volunteering).
For further emphasis, it is sometimes
enlarged to sirree (No sirree, I’m not going
around there tonight!).
Sire is now restricted chiefly to the male parent
of a quadruped (Man of War was the sire
of several famous race horses). In poetic usage,
it means a father or a forefather (The sire his
sword bequeathing to his son. Our sires died
that we might live in freedom). As a respectful
term of address it is more restricted than sir,
for it is now used only to a sovereign, and since
sovereigns and opportunities of addressing them
are rare, it is confined to poetry (“You’re
urounded!” “Nay,” the soldier’s pride/ Touched
to the quick, he said:/ “I’m killed, Sire!“) and
jokes (Sire, a lady waits without).
s&en. This is an old plural of sister. formed like
brethren and children. It is now. obsolete or
dialectal.
sit. The past tense is sat. The participle is also sat.
This verb does not necessarily mean assume
a sitting posture. It may be used for inanimate
and abstract things that do not have legs, as in
one of the low on whom assurance sits as a’ silk
hat on a Bradford millionaire. It may be used
with an object, as in he sits his horse well and
he sat the meeting out. It may also be used to
mean cause to sit, as in sit the baby up. At one
time set would have been preferred in this sentence,
but in current English set has come to
mean place rather than cause to sit. See set.
457 skeptic
situate; situated. Situate as an adjective is archaic
except in a legal sense (The house is situate
immediately adjacent to Christ Church). In all
general uses situated is the right word for located
or placed (Knoxville is situated downstream
from the confluence of the Holston and
French Broad rivers). It may also mean fixed
(He is well situated financially).
situation. See job.
six of one and half a dozen of the other, as a way
of saying that there is little to choose between
alternatives because they are so evenly matched,
is a clicht.
skate on thin ice. Up until a generation ago when
play became supervised, every boy who lived
near a pond or a river knew the excitement and
the voluptuous sensation of skating on thin ice
and knew, as Emerson had said, that in such
skating safety lay in speed. The experience was
common and the metaphor drawn from it was
immediately and universally understood. But it
has been overworked and must now be classed
as worn and weakened.
skeleton at the feast. It was Herodotus, in the
fifth century B.C., who told us that the Egyptians
used to produce “the image of a corpse”
at their feasts to remind the feasters of their
mortality. The gruesomeness of the procedure
has fascinated the world for twenty-five hundred
years and there are many references to
the custom. It survives today chiefly as a humorous
term for one who by his presence dampens
the general gaiety, and as such it is hackneyed.
skeleton in the closet. As a term for a hidden
shame, known to the members of a family but
concealed from the outer world, a skeleton in
the closet (the English say cupboard) is a
clich6. The expression seems to have been invented
by Thackeray.
skeptic; skeptical; sceptic; sceptical. For the adjective
the English use SC-, the Americans sk-.
The pronunciation is sk- in both spellings. Skeptical
and sceptical are preferred to skeptic and
sceptic.
The adjective means inclined to skepticism,
having doubt (Many people were skeptical nbout
the long-range value of the project), showing
doubt (That sudden, skeptical glance shook her
confidence in her ability to carry 08 the story),
questioning the tenets of religion (Many late
Victorians were skeptical about the doctrine of
special creation), or of or pertaining to skeptics
or skepticism (He wus instinctive/y drawn to a
skeptical world view).
skeptic; sceptic; disbeliever. American skeptic
(English sceptic) is not to be confused with
disbeliever. Actually a skeptic is one who questions
the validity or authenticity of something
purporting to be knowledge, one who maintains
a doubting attitude (There are some surly skeptics
who don’t think the new vaccine has yet
justified the popular faith in it). As applied to
religion, a skeptic is one who doubts the truth
of the Christian religion or of important elements
of it. He does not deny absolutely the
truth of Christianity, as does the disbeliever. In