Don: “Up until the age of 25, I believed that ‘invective’ was a synonym for ‘urine’.”
BBC: “Why ever would you have thought that?”
Don: “During my childhood, I read many of the Edgar Rice Burroughs ‘Tarzan’ stories, and in those books, whenever a lion wandered into a clearing, the monkeys would leap into the trees and ‘cast streams of invective upon the lion’s head.’”
BBC: “But, surely sir, you now know the meaning of the word.”
Don: “Yes, but I do wonder under what other misapprehensions I continue to labour.”
From a BBC interview with a retiring Oxford Don:
Don: “Up until the age of 25, I believed that ‘invective’ was a synonym for ‘urine’.”
BBC: “Why ever would you have thought that?”
Don: “During my childhood, I read many of the Edgar Rice Burroughs ‘Tarzan’ stories, and in those books, whenever a lion wandered into a clearing, the monkeys would leap into the trees and ‘cast streams of invective upon the lion’s head.’”
BBC: “But, surely sir, you now know the meaning of the word.”
Don: “Yes, but I do wonder under what other misapprehensions I continue to labour.”