“. . . a thought-murder a day keeps the psychiatrist away.”
(Saul Bellow, Ravelstein, p. 95)
Inelegantly expressed, but the thought is interesting.
“. . . a thought-murder a day keeps the psychiatrist away.”
(Saul Bellow, Ravelstein, p. 95)
Inelegantly expressed, but the thought is interesting.
M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
« Jul | ||||||
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 |
27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 |
The construction harkens back to the Anglo-Saxon.
I’d say it’s clunky but elegant. Clunky because “thought-murder”
is, but elegant because it’s compact and precise. Absent the hyphen, “thought murder” might be the murder of a thought. With it, on the established model of thought-experiment, “thought-murder” must be a murder committed in thought only. Perhaps Gedankenmord had been better.