I started wondering if this word existed as I was using my vacuum cleaner as a means of dispensing with a procession of the six-legged…
Once again, I would have told you that I knew what scourge means. And I would have been generally sort of right. I would have used it in certain contexts as a synonym for threat or to mean a damaging influence.
But when I came across the second Porcian law, which according to wikipedia, «prohibits scourging of citizens without appeal», it became painfully clear that I had no idea of its specific meaning.
The most sacred rights of freedom, confirmed by the Porcian and Sempronian laws, were suspended by the military engagement. Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall…
According to Slate, early twentieth-century fashion designer Paul Poiret wrote, «The taste for the refinements of the eighteenth century had led all women into a…