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Have you ever heard the expression "it pains me to say this"? Sometimes the word painful is used to imply the internal turmoil one has when making difficult de
by techdragon 13y ago
Have you ever heard the expression "it pains me to say this"?
Sometimes the word painful is used to imply the internal turmoil one has when making difficult decisions. I'm not attempting to be disparaging, merely curious, since I don't know anything about your level of familiarity with English idioms. The phrase "painful decision" when read by myself immediately reads as synonymous to "difficult decision", so your attempting to make a distinction here that honestly confuses me.
- lisper 13y ago> Have you ever heard the expression "it pains me to say this"? Yes. It's an idiom. It means, "I feel uncomfortable or ambiguous about saying this, but I'm going to say it nonetheless." But you didn't use the word "pain" in this idiomatic sense. You said: "Defending freedom of speech feels - and should feel - very painful." No. Having a tooth filled without anesthetic feels painful. Deciding to put a pet to sleep feels painful. Going through a divorce feels painful. (I speak from personal experience in all three cases.) But defending freedom of speech does not feel painful. It can be quite frustrating at times, but never painful. Most of the time it make me feel proud. > I don't want to see Neo-Nazis protesting in a public area of my city Neither do I. But I absolutely want neo-nazis to be able to protest in a public area of my city. There is not an iota of moral ambiguity here (at least not in my mind) and hence no pain. It does not "pain me to say" this: I will defend the right of neo-nazis to spew their bile every bit as vigorously as I will oppose nearly all of what they say.