lexicon
We ought not
Deepti

Play a while

For all those who love to eat fish; the story goes that when refrigeration was not so common, the old maxim was that oysters should not be consumed in the months that do not have an ‘r’ in their name. Hence, from May to August people did not consume oysters and later, this veto was laid down for fish as well. Foodies being foodies, they did find a way out by spelling August as ‘Orgust’!

Teachers have always disapproved of guide books that simplify literature for students and Indian teachers think the kunji is their Indian bane. These little snippets from the guidebooks on Shakespeare published by a UK publisher should cheer them up in this evaluation season of doom and gloom: ‘Cowardy custard’ is the paraphrase of Lady Macbeth’s famous chiding of her husband, ‘Was the hope drunk/Wherein you dressed yourself?’ and Macbeth’s fearful response to the dagger that he can see, ‘Is this the dagger which I see before me, /The handle toward my hand?’ is paraphrased as ‘Ooh! Would you look at that?’

‘Walls have ears’ is a warning to watch what you say because someone maybe listening. The saying comes from the 16th century when Catherine de Medici ordered the construction of certain rooms at the Louvre with the special feature of a network of listening tubes so that what was said in one room could be heard in another. Dionysus, the tyrant, could have been the origin of this expression because of the ‘ear’ he had commissioned in his prison. This was a large era-shaped underground cave cut in a rock and connected to the prison chamber in such a way that he could hear the conversation of his prisoners.

‘Ought’ is always followed by an infinitive as in ‘We ought to write our thank-you letters’ or ‘Students ought to read the questions carefully’. The negative form is ‘ought not’ as in ‘He ought not to have done this’ and not ‘He hadn’t ought to have done this’ and ‘She ought not to say these words’ and not ‘She didn’t ought to say these words’.