Chrysti The Wordsmith: Sarcasm - 1

Greetings This is Christie the wordsmith. Thomas Carlyle 19th century Scottish essayist wrote sarcasm. I now see to be the language of the devil for which reason I have renounced it while Carlyle considered sarcasm the devil's language writer Marianne Evans aka George Eliot likened it to verbal cudgelling. She wrote blows are sarcasms turned stupid. Sarcasm is often associated with bitter and biting comments. The adjective biting is especially appropriate in this context because that's essentially what sarcasm means. The word is Greek in origin. The derivative of a verb that means literally to tear flesh like dogs. The Sark as a RC portion of sarcasm comes from the Greek word for flesh. By the time the word was adopted by English speakers around the sixteenth century sarcasm referred to a comment as painful to the soul as a dog bite is to the flesh. Sarcasm shares a linguistic heritage with

other words beginning with the letters S A R C all of which are associated somehow with Flash. Sarcocystis is the development of fleshy tumors. Sar college e means the study of flesh and refers to the branch of medicine dealing with the study of the body's soft tissues. But the most remarkable member of this word family is sarcophagus. Find out how it's related to sarcasm. Next time I'm Christie the wordsmith the Dave herbivores Christie the wordsmith is sponsored by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Zoot enterprises a high tech firm in Bozeman Montana offering challenging careers and innovative solutions for the financial services industry. Zoot web dot com.