Talk:Nigel de Grey

"Error" in spelling of dormouse

It is said to have been doormouse and so presumably a pun. They were codebreakers - was he as well as small something of a 'mouse' who also sat by / looked after the door, even a figurative door providing answers? ODNB carefully provides the reference: "M. Smith, Station X: the codebreakers of Bletchley Park (1998)" Eddaido (talk) 21:37, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Are you speculating about the "door" joke? —Tamfang (talk) 20:56, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

That's so embarrassing, it looks as if that was the last ever contribution to Wikipedia by Parsingphrase. Yes I am speculating but the ODNB went to such trouble for its attribution they seem to have seen it as *significant* and that's my only guess for the reason but as a man of the same ilk yourself you might be able to come up with something much more deeply insightful and codebreaking. Do you have dormice in your attic? No, I don't mean bats my old friend. I think there may have been a time when they (dormice), like rooks in a big tree by the house, might have been made very welcome. Best wishes Eddaido (talk) 06:44, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

liquidation

I said "liquidating" is a euphemism and changed it to "massacring". Eddaido changed it back, saying, Get liquidated and see how happy you feel — missing the point of euphemism. It's a term used (primarily by Communists, or at least that's my cumulative impression) to obscure the reality of killing. (One could imagine an alternate history in which liquidating became a synonym for dissolving a group without harming its members.) Why not use a word that transparently means killing? —Tamfang (talk) 20:56, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

I asked about the word at WP:RD/L and was told that in Russian likvidirovatj can indeed mean 'disband'. —Tamfang (talk) 23:18, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

For future reference: Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 March 30#liquidation. —Tamfang (talk) 19:56, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

This is interesting too: Liquidator (Chernobyl) —Tamfang (talk) 07:07, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Or is "liquidating" meant literally? Does it mean the victims are homogenized, or merely that some of their fluid content is let free? —Tamfang (talk) 23:57, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, I understood it to mean what you understand it to mean and this reference liquidation says so too (under colloquial) and too I see why you are going on about it:
1957 E. Partridge English gone Wrong ii. 31 Liquidate, therefore, is an erudite synonym of ‘to wind up’, hence, in its euphemistic transferred sense, it means ‘to eradicate in a thoroughly ruthless manner’, ‘to destroy, especially by mass murder’.
But 1957 is a long time ago now for many people (more than half a century if one's counting and who isn't) and Mr Partridge may be by now a little obsolescent in his particular description of it as a euphemism.
The next item that appears below the search box choices for 'liquidation' is 'liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto' so it seems to be an acceptable term around here.

missing the point of euphemism. It's a term used (primarily by Communists
I didn't know Communists used the term euphemism, maybe they do, I did just feel you might be becoming a little euphuistic.

Was I really responsible for putting that word into the article to begin with? I'm not always that good with words. Eddaido (talk) 06:31, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

It's anything but euphuism to prefer plain unambiguous words. — I don't know or care who first wrote "liquidating". I came to this article not because I'm stalking you but because I noticed that some members of Category:Grey family were alphabetized under Grey when they ought not to be. —Tamfang (talk) 07:06, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

oops. that is; an acceptable term relating to Polish people caught so tragically in WW2. Eddaido (talk) 06:48, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

You'll note that Liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto is not the actual title of the article; its existence as a redirect to Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is not much support for the proposition that liquidation is the best word here; it does not appear in the article. Note also that the ghetto occupants were removed, not all killed on the spot (unless they fought); if this was a liquidation, it was more the "disband" kind. (Probably neither the soldiers nor the victims knew that they were to be killed at Treblinka.) —Tamfang (talk) 07:06, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

I owe an apology to you. In my teens we were enjoined to keep Partridge and Fowler in mind and near us and knowing your admiration for the second muddled him with this man Eric Partridge. Anyway, back to the topic, it is the word used for those events of that time in that place and as we have agreed we know just what it means so . . . it is the best word here in this article. If you want a full copy n paste from the OED (2010 edition) let me know but you got plenty of answers from your reference query didn't you.

I was delighted to see how quickly you as well picked up on that Grey family category. I was happily loading it up so we would have material to discuss with Boleyn and now await further developments with interest. (someone keeps writing to me about Elizabeth Woodville's entry, I've said something like 'wait until the fan's switched on'). Eddaido (talk)

I do have Partridge's Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, but know little else about him. — Where were you so enjoined?

At school. and here we get into your language and cultural problems again (see below), around age 15-16 Eddaido (talk) 10:07, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

And now it occurs to me that I misunderstood the phrase "systematically levelling villages and liquidating their populations", assuming that liquidating means killing as it now usually does. A quick look at the article linked (which also does not use that word) suggests that a better translation is removing. Is there a good reason to preserve such ambiguity? —Tamfang (talk) 08:26, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

No ambiguity it means what it says, some people can learn new words can't they? As I've already pointed out it is used correctly in Wikipedia already. To repeat more fully the answer you were given earlier - re-visit WP:RD/L noting date and time of the response to your question and try to understand this time (!).

Either liquidate always means kill, in which case it appears to be false here; or it has more than one meaning, which is ambiguity.

Your point about date & time is too subtle for me. —Tamfang (talk) 19:56, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Copy and paste from Oxford English Dictionary published 2010

• 7. [after Russian likvidírovat′ to liquidate, wind up.] To put an end to, abolish; to stamp out, wipe out; to kill.
• 1924 Yale Rev. XIII. 477 In this way the ‘Labor Opposition’, the ‘Workers Pravda’, and a few other recalcitrant groups were all ‘liquidated’.
• 1926 C. Sheridan Turkish Kaleidoscope xvi. 125 The evening paper, L'Akcham, came out with large headlines: ‘How to Liquidate a Strike’.
• 1930 Economist 1 Nov. (Russ. Suppl.) 2/2 Only in 1929, when the growth of the Socialist section of agriculture was enabling the State to become independent of the supplies of the Kulaks, could the Government begin to ‘liquidate’ them.
• 1939 V. A. Demant Relig. Prospect iv. 90 The Trotskyists‥are ‘liquidated’ as being insufficiently dialectical to see that the policy of the Russian State at any moment has absolute finality.
• 1943 C. S. Lewis Abolition of Man iii. 37 Once we killed bad men: now we liquidate unsocial elements.
• 1957 E. Partridge English gone Wrong ii. 31 Liquidate, therefore, is an erudite synonym of ‘to wind up’, hence, in its euphemistic transferred sense, it means ‘to eradicate in a thoroughly ruthless manner’, ‘to destroy, especially by mass murder’.
• 1970 Nature 26 Dec. 1248/2 All existing sources of industrial pollution are to be ‘liquidated’.
• 1971 Sunday Times 13 June 12/6 When the army units fanned out in Dacca on the evening of March 25‥many of them carried lists of people to be liquidated.

From the article about de Grey in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: "The intercepts included harrowing daily returns from SS Sonderkommandos and Eisengruppen that showed the units, ostensibly deployed in anti-partisan operations, were responsible for the systematic levelling of entire villages and the liquidation of their populations." i.e. destruction of the people by killing them.

What is it about this is eating you? Cheers, Eddaido (talk) 10:07, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

For one thing, that the article linked from those words says that the populations of the villages were not killed, at least not immediately. If both the ODNB (which is not where I'd look first for details of the war in Poland) and our article are accurate, then liquidate cannot mean 'kill' in this context, and it would be wrong to use a word that will most likely be understood to mean 'kill'.

In the example from 1926, 'kill' does not fit; one doesn't kill an event, and killing strikers doesn't obviously call for any special technique. In 1924 likewise 'disband' fits at least as easily as 'kill'. In 1939 liquidated seems to mean 'impotent'. —Tamfang (talk) 19:56, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

ODNB again "On 17 January 1917 de Grey and a church historian colleague, the Revd William Montgomery, decrypted a German diplomatic text that later became widely known as the Zimmermann telegram. Its public disclosure was to lead directly to America's declaration of war on Germany in 1917."

Your opinions are more authoritative? Eddaido (talk) 10:57, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Again, I hope you'll forgive me for neglecting to consult the ODNB for details of the progress of the war. (I'll note that the first paragraph of Zimmerman Telegram contains the phrase "led in part to a U.S. declaration of war in April.")

On another hand, I did misremember the sequence of some other events. —Tamfang (talk) 19:56, 4 April 2011 (UTC)