My current main read is Great Voices Of The Reformation, Edited by Harry Emerson Fosdick and published in 1952, I think my copy, bought used some time ago for a long-forgotten price, was from 1954, I think. I bought it as a reference book. However, last November, I pulled it off my research shelf and decided to read it. I’ve been going at it slowly, normally 5 to 10 pages a day, but skipping days where I felt like it and reading fewer pages on days when I didn’t think I was reading for comprehension.

The last couple of days I had progressed to the included writings of Cotton Mather. This 17th Century New England Puritan is a man whose name I have often heard but really knew little about. I’ve learned something of him from the brief bio provided by Fosdick and from the excerpt from Mather’s magnum opus, Magnalia Christi Americana. This was Mather’s defense of the Puritan method of colonization, intending to make Winthrop’s “shining city on a hill” into the reality it never was.

In Tuesday’s reading I came across the word “animadvert”. This is a word I’ve seen somewhat regularly in the old writings and have looked up to know what it was I was reading. Then, in Thursday’s reading it came up again, but in a different form. Here’s the quote:

…diverse persons professing themselves Quakers…arrived at Boston, whose persons were only secured to be sent aaway by the first opportunity, without censure or punishment, although their professed tenets, turbulent and contemptuous behavior to authority, would have justified a severer animadversion—A law was made and published, prohibiting all masters of ships to bring any Quakers into this jurisdiction….

This form of the word, as a noun rather than a verb, if what I see most of the time. Here’s what I learn from the dictionary about them.

Animadvert: verb; 1) to pay attention to; 2) pass criticism or censure on; speak out against.

Animadversion: noun: criticism or censure

This is an old work originally from Latin, adopted into English more or less directly from the Latin. Dictionaries give the etymology. They also show a severe decline in usage from the early 1800s unto our time. Here’s a graph that shows that for animadversion.

 

I’m not surprised that the word has fallen out of use. Animadversion is so much more complicated than criticism or censure. It sounds so strange. I never see myself using it in a sentence, either in speech or in a book, whether or not it’s considered archaic.

What are the nuances of its usage, I wonder? When would it be more correct—if ever—to use than criticize or censure? Would I say, “Trump I criticize, but Biden I animadvert”? That would take a lot of study, consuming time I really don’t have.

This got me to thinking about words and what they mean. I have a tendency, which I think many people have, to use words without really thinking about what they mean. I’m trying to change that. We’ll see how it goes in the future.

Meanwhile, if you don’t like this post, keep your animadversions to yourself!