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From the video (01:40) when the headmistress of the school in Wales calls the girl "indolent and feckless" it is a rich and meaningful accusation (rightly or wr
by jmkd 4y ago
From the video (01:40) when the headmistress of the school in Wales calls the girl "indolent and feckless" it is a rich and meaningful accusation (rightly or wrongly) that today would more likely be dumbed down into "stupid".
This short video has many such examples that offer a high level of precision in everyday communication that seems rarely achieved today.
- strken 4y agoI'm not sure "indolent and feckless" is much more descriptive than "lazy and unmotivated." Modern American English likes adding prefixes (-un) and suffixes (-ated) to everything, which I find clutteratedizing, but such language still communicates meaning.
- n4r9 4y agoI'd hazard a guess that - at the time in which they were commonly used - "indolent and feckless" described character traits (or habits of behaviour) whereas "lazy and unmotivated" described individual behaviours. If I take a 2 hour lunch one day and don't make my 1pm meeting, it's lazy. If I generally only make 10% of my meetings for that reason, it's indolent. These days "lazy" is used equally for either a single behaviour or a habitual behaviour. The meaning has to be inferred from context, which makes it less accurate than the above definitions.