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Message from discussion square meters Re: Olympic question(s)
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benlizro@ihug.co.nz  
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 More options Oct 4 2012, 3:44 pm
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english, sci.lang
From: "benli...@ihug.co.nz" <benli...@ihug.co.nz>
Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2012 12:44:50 -0700 (PDT)
Local: Thurs, Oct 4 2012 3:44 pm
Subject: Re: square meters Re: Olympic question(s)
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On Oct 5, 12:44 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:

> On Oct 3, 11:53 pm, "benli...@ihug.co.nz" <benli...@ihug.co.nz> wrote:

> > On Oct 4, 4:21 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> > > On Oct 3, 3:54 pm, "benli...@ihug.co.nz" <benli...@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
> > > > Or possibly whoever said something about "the hand writing on the
> > > > wall"? There certainly was a hand involved.-

> > > That might have been appropriate if the discourse topic had been
> > > hands, but since it was omens (and not in any technical sense), it was
> > > not.

> > ? You mean that "the hand writing on the wall" was not an omen?-

> A rather ghoulish one. When someone says "And she saw the handwriting
> on the wall and understood she'd have no chance at the job at all,"
> there is no "hand" image behind the phrase. In the text, nothing is
> made of the hand save that it was evidence of divine provenience; what
> was interpreted was the message contained in "mene, mene, tekel
> upharsin."

I still don't see why "he saw the hand writing on the wall" is not a
reasonable allusion to the Biblical story by way of one of its key
elements. Of course its proverbial use nowadays usually does not
include the word "hand". But someone who knew the story might well
include it. And that would be less odd, it seems to me, than
"handwriting", which has occasioned all this discussion.

 
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