Tuesday, November 30, 2021

About pedantry

Someone called me “a minefield of information” today, which was rather lovely, so I didn’t pull on my pedantic trousers. I did, though, grimace inwardly when the sack of lumpy custard pretending to be the Prime Minister encouraged people to go “into the breach”, one of the more persistent and tiresome misquotations of Shakespeare; and when, even less forgivably, in the latest episode of Doctor Who, the unseen Lethbridge-Stewart is referred to as a Corporal...

2 comments:

Roger Allen said...

Had the Doctor met Lethbridge-Stewart at an early stage in his career this time?
I always quote Bertrand Russell's definition of a pedant - "A man who likes his statements to be true."

Tim F said...

The problem is that the Doctor first met him before he was in UNIT, and he was a Colonel. In this episode, he was in UNIT- but had been demoted to Corporal.