Tory

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Dr. Goodword
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Tory

Postby Dr. Goodword » Tue Oct 25, 2022 7:22 pm

• Tory •


Pronunciation: tor-ree • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun, proper

Meaning: 1. (Colloquial) A member of the British Conservative Party. (Antonym: Whig "member of British Liberal Party"). 2. An American supporting the British Crown during the American Revolution. 3. (Historical) An outlaw, dispossessed by English settlers, living by robbing the English. 4. (Scottish and Irish English) A scoundrel, rascal, dishonest or mischievous person.

Notes: This word was thrust in world news recently by three Tory prime ministers in six weeks. It has two adjectives: Toryish and Toryistic. The realm of Tory politics is the Torydom and the political views of Tories is Toryism. The verb is Toryize "convert to Toryism".

In Play: Tory is generally replaced by Conservative in the UK today, but today's word still survives: "The British people now seem to believe that the hard Brexit that the Tories negotiated only exacerbated the UK's current economic crisis." It only has a historical sense in the US: "The current insurrectionists in the US are just a reification of the Tories during the Revolutionary War."

Word History: English borrowed this word from Irish tórai "(fortune-)hunter; bandit; Tory", a reduction of Old Irish toirighim "I pursue, chase, hunt". This word was based on an unattested verb to-fo-reith, derived from Celtic to-wo-ret "run up to", based on PIE ret-/rot- "to run, roll". We find evidence of this word in Sanskrit rathah "cart", Latin and Albanian rota "wheel", Irish roth "wheel", Welsh rhod "wheel", German Rad "wheel", Dutch rad "wheel", Latvian ritenis "wheel", and Lithuanian ratas "wheel".
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Slava
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Re: Tory

Postby Slava » Tue Oct 25, 2022 9:05 pm

Every time I see rota and its kin, I'm reminded of the greatest palindrome I know of:

SATOR
AREPO
TENET
OPERA
ROTAS
Life is like playing chess with chessmen who each have thoughts and feelings and motives of their own.

Debbymoge
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Re: Tory

Postby Debbymoge » Wed Oct 26, 2022 1:44 pm

Okay, Slave, I looked it up.
I was a bit chagrined at getting nowhere trying to translate it. While I accept that my linguistic memories are fading in each of the languages I used to know, I couldn't make any sense of this.
I was relieved to see that no one expert seems to know, definitively, what the palindrome means, either.

What does it mean to you?
I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.
Shakespear

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Slava
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Re: Tory

Postby Slava » Wed Oct 26, 2022 7:47 pm

What it means to me is simply the rough translation: Sator the sower holds the wheels of work. That is, Sator's in charge. It has lots of possible, or even probable, hidden meanings, but that's not why I like it. I just think it's cool

Here are a couple of sites for further explication:
https://www.satorarepo.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sator_Square
Life is like playing chess with chessmen who each have thoughts and feelings and motives of their own.

David Myer
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Re: Tory

Postby David Myer » Mon Oct 31, 2022 6:05 am

Hmm. I once has a girlfriend called Tory. It was a shorter version, I believe, of Victoria.

Debbymoge
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Re: Tory

Postby Debbymoge » Sat Nov 05, 2022 12:51 pm

Thanks, Slava. That's close to what I found.
I thought the chronologically later explanation turning it into a cross and playing with the letters was funny!
It reminds me of something that happened some time ago near my home town.
There is a large rock in or near the town of Chelmsford that has a number of holes in it. Some time ago (now that I think of it, a few decades) a fellow said that he had connected the dots and it was a British medieval knight holding a shield with the knight's family crest on it. He named the knight and began making a bit of money off this "proof" that British had been inland in present day Massachusetts much earlier than ever documented.
After a bit of the brouhaha had begun to wear thin, another fellow in the town connected the dots. The picture he found proved that there was a little fat man in a sleigh drawn through the sky by 8 small reindeer.
For awhile, the first story was much quieter. Not too long ago, it began to be revived.
Proof that we don't learn from our mistakes? At the least, proof that the collective memory is short lived?
I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.
Shakespear


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