I say this in good humor, but Michael, if you really were the snobbish, "traditional presciptivist" you say you are, you would _not_ have looked up the meaning of a word in Wikipedia, the antithesis of snobs. Say what you will about its virtues, there ain't no backbone in a thing that can changed by whim or will.
Perhaps you might have "looked it up in Fowler," as they used say: "irony is form of utterance that postulates a double audience, consisting of one party that hearing shall hear & not understand, & another party that, when more is meant than meets the ear, is aware both of that more & the outsiders' incomprehension." Or maybe the OED. Or, if you were to stick to your Ancient Greek (and why that should be the backbone of English, I'm not sure), you would've pulled your Middle Liddell off the shelf (who, after all, has the space or need for the Great Scott?) and found that εἰρωνεία is "assumed ignorance," and not the Socratic versions of "feigning" that εἰρωνευομαι or εἰρωνικος are (as Steve pointed out). Or, perhaps you were again being ironic in choosing Wikipedia to snobbishly prescribe? Matt Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
