{"id":3747,"date":"2017-02-20T12:02:42","date_gmt":"2017-02-20T20:02:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/?p=3747"},"modified":"2019-05-09T23:06:10","modified_gmt":"2019-05-10T07:06:10","slug":"the-death-of-english-part-mmxvii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/?p=3747","title":{"rendered":"the death of English, part MMXVII"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/theoutline.com\/post\/1112\/the-volcanic-myth-behind-north-korea-s-assassination-drama\">Here<\/a>: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Like much of the news that ekes its way out of the totalitarian state, the murder is equal parts scary, sad, and vaguely comical.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I don&#8217;t think I had seen this extension of <i>eke<\/i> before.<\/p>\n<p>Once upon a time, <i>eke<\/i> meant \u2018also\u2019; a relic of that sense is the word <i>nickname<\/i>, from <i>an eke-name<\/i>.  (The transfer of the <i>n<\/i> from the article to the root was, I guess, favored by the alliteration.)<\/p>\n<p>The phrase <i>eke out a living<\/i> meant \u2018to supplement a fixed stipend\u2019, as in <i>The village priest eked out his meager living<\/i> (i.e., the pay he got as priest) <i>by making and selling strawberry jam.<\/i>  I guess that sense went away when the noun <i>living<\/i> itself got a broader sense; if your \u2018living\u2019\u00a0is your whole income, however obtained, you don&#8217;t add anything <em>external<\/em> to it.<\/p>\n<p>So <i>eke out<\/i> (a living, or anything else) came to mean \u2018obtain with difficulty\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>Information or water can be said to \u2018find\u2019 a way out of its container, but it seems a bit much to suggest that it does so with effort.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here: Like much of the news that ekes its way out of the totalitarian state, the murder is equal parts scary, sad, and vaguely comical. I don&#8217;t think I had seen this extension of eke before. Once upon a time, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/?p=3747\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3747"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3747\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4015,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3747\/revisions\/4015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}