{"id":8623,"date":"2018-06-02T08:46:39","date_gmt":"2018-06-02T08:46:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/xislblogs.xtreamlab.net\/slwoods\/?p=8623"},"modified":"2018-06-02T13:05:35","modified_gmt":"2018-06-02T13:05:35","slug":"fell-is-foul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/?p=8623","title":{"rendered":"Fell is foul"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many of the phrases in common use in English have 2 sources: either the Bible (both the authorised King James version and earlier translations, such as those of Wycliffe<\/a> and Tyndale<\/a>. Ed.<\/em>) and the pen of William Shakespeare.<\/p>\n

Indeed, some lovers of the English language actually refer to it euphemistically as “the language of Shakespeare<\/em>” when someone ignorant commits an indignity with it.<\/p>\n

Today’s online edition of the Bristol Post\/Live, the city’s newspaper of (warped) record has not difficulty in mangling some of the Bard of Avon’s actual words.<\/p>\n

The misquoting of the Bard occurs in a promotional piece<\/a> advertising a supermarket chain’s substantial breakfast. The piece itself was a cut and paste job lifted from the Post’s Trinity Mirror stablemate, the Manchester Evening News, which itself lifted the item from the Metro, a publication so downmarket its owners the Daily Mail have to give it away.<\/p>\n

\"misquoted<\/p>\n

However, neither the MEN nor the Metro saw fit to misquote Shakespeare; that was a solo effort by the Temple Way Ministry of Truth.<\/p>\n

The offending sentence is in the final passage shown in the above screenshot, i.e.:<\/p>\n

The breakfast contains your entire daily allowance in one foul swoop, but it’s described as the perfect meal for those with a big appetite.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The actual words penned by Shakespeare are not “one foul swoop<\/em>” but “one fell swoop<\/em>” and occur in Macbeth<\/a>, Act 4, scene 3, when Macduff hears that his family have been killed. Macduff remarks:<\/p>\n

All my pretty ones?
\nDid you say all?\u2014O hell-kite!\u2014All?
\nWhat, all my pretty chickens, and their dam,
\nAt one fell swoop?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“One fowl swoop<\/em>” is occurs frequently as a variation to the misquotation.<\/p>\n

Whether Shakespeare actually invented the phrase himself or was the first to write it down is a matter of debate. Even so, Macbeth was written in 1605, so even the Bard’s the phrase dates back over four centuries.<\/p>\n

The adjective “fell<\/em>” is archaic, meaning<\/a> evil or cruel, so it’s unsurprising that it’s misquoted. Moreover, in its context tends to occur in literary works such as J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic “<\/em>Lord of the Rings<\/em><\/a>” (e.g. fell beasts<\/a><\/em>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many of the phrases in common use in English have 2 sources: either the Bible (both the authorised King James version and earlier translations, such as those of Wycliffe and Tyndale. Ed.) and the pen of William Shakespeare. Indeed, some lovers of the English language actually refer to it euphemistically as “the language of Shakespeare” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,3,32],"tags":[40,16,10,22,33],"class_list":["post-8623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bristol","category-translation-and-language-related-matters","category-media","tag-bristol","tag-english-usage","tag-facepalm","tag-language","tag-media-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8623"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8623\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8658,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8623\/revisions\/8658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}