OK, I just finished off a piece for the New Statesman on the uses of heresy with the following sentence: “You say ‘homoousios’ and I say ‘homoiousios’ but we are each trying to get the other to say ‘uncle’.” I did explain the Greek words earlier, since I could imagine that they would dcause trouble. But I was surprised when the editor of the section said she didn’t know what it meant to “say ‘uncle’.” She’s a woman of about my age, whom I have known for years. Does anyone else find the expression strange? Am I marooned in the last century? Should I admit that I’d rather the Greek words were typeset in Greek?
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Meta
Well you could at least have said it in Latin: Patrue, mi Patruissimo.
I haven’t heard the expression in quite a while, so it may have passed out of fashion.
I’ve heard the expression many times, first encountering it in ‘Catch-22’. I could certainly use it happily in a sentence, but I don’t understand the background to the saying.
I know the expression, & have possibly even used it a couple of times (unlike the Greek), but I think I got it from books rather than conversation.
I’m pretty sure its an expression of American origin, and that I learned it from Heinlein
further to its origin — isn’t it what the stronger child beating up the weaker/holding the weaker in a half nelson/waterboarding the weaker requires the weaker to say in order to be released?