Free news and Quotes -

I am a deeply superficial person. (Who could have used palm pilot software)

-- Andy Warhol (1928 - 1987)

I can't bring myself to say, 'Well, I guess I'll be toddling along.' It isn't that I can't toddle. It's just that I can't guess I'll toddle.

-- Robert Benchley (1889 - 1945)

Television news is like a lightning flash. It makes a loud noise, lights up everything around it, leaves everything else in darkness and then is suddenly gone.

-- Hodding Carter

WORD: plaint PLAYNT (noun)

: An expression of sorrow

: A complaint.

SYNONYMS: * lamentation

* criticism

* grievance

WORD WISE: Plaint comes from Old French plainte, from Latin planctus, past participle of plangere, "to strike the breast, to lament."

QUOTE: "...that soul imprisoned in a body, itself a prisoner within that dungeon, and from out that double incarnation of flesh and stone, the perpetual plaint of a soul in agony..."

--Victor Hugo, Notre Dame de Paris

Here is the origin for the phrase "Indian giver."

There are two popular etymologies for this term for a person who gives a gift only to later demand its return. The first is that it is based on an unfair stereotype of Native Ameri- cans, that they don't keep their word. In the other popular explanation, the term doesn't cast aspersions on Native Americans, instead it echoes the broken promises the whites made to the Indians. Neither is accurate, although the first is closer to the truth.

Instead the term comes from different commercial practices. To the Native Americans, who had no concept of money or currency, gifts were a form of trade goods, of exchange. One didn't give a gift without expecting one of equivalent value in return. If one could not offer an equivalent return gift, the original gift would be refused or returned. To the Euro- peans, who with their monetary-based trade practices, this seemed low and insulting, gifts were not for trade but were to be freely given.

The noun Indian gift dates to 1765. Indian giver follows about a century later in 1865. Originally, these reflected simply the expectation of a return gift. By the 1890s, the sense had shifted to mean one who demands a gift back.

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