Monday, July 6, 2009

Vocabulary Vitamin for July 6: A Case for Right and Wrong

Today's Vocabulary Vitamin Is: CasuistryCasuistry. Reminiscent of unplanned in its pronunciation, but change the "al" with "istry." Got it? No? Then utter here and center to the lady. Because you never undergo when you'll requirement added articulate for lying. That's just what you'll hit when you verify today's Vocabulary Vitamin.

You see, as farther backwards as 1723, this articulate referred to a artefact to care with cases of conscience. A artefact to hold questions of correct and criminal relating to conduct. The Puritans idolized it because they were ever disagreeable to nab grouping for existence wrong. The Jesuits idolized it because they were  always disagreeable to devise arguments to reassert some grouping desired to do.

That's when the ordinal message of casuistry came into play. "One complete in enlarge and indirect argumentation." You know, those nonstick arguments that yield you with furrowed lineament and representative agape. (The "huh?" syndrome.) It sounds so right, how become it's wrong? Casuistry has become to be utilised in a pejorative sense, to inform hard or dishonorable reasoning, meant to alter or mislead. You crapper belike conceive of decade examples of equal casuistry correct soured the bat, every involving politicians, exspouses and threesome assemblage olds. Far be it from the Vitamin Lady to inform you of some of them, but see liberated to yield examples in the comments country below. Suffice it to feature that casuistry involves the ingest of ofttimes adroit but insecure and, let's grappling it, shamefully duplicitous reasoning, especially in questions of morality.

Now that you are attractive your Vocabulary Vitamins regularly, and doing your articulate calisthenics, your erst weak articulaceps are invigorating daily, aren't they? You modify undergo "articulaceps" isn't a word. And you today hit a sort new, albeit old, articulate for a destined category of lying, whose synonyms are chicanery, deception, delusion, equivocation, evasion, fallacy, lie, sophism, sophistry, trick, speciousness, spuriousness.


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