Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2021 June 17

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June 17

What's the meaning of "recon" in this robbery context?

• Five months earlier, H is out with his son Dougie when he reluctantly agrees to a call asking him to help with the recon of an armored truck for a robbery.

What's the meaning of "recon" in this context? Rizosome (talk) 13:34, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

Reconnaissance. --Wrongfilter (talk) 13:40, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

See recon on Wiktionary.  --Lambiam 14:50, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

There appears to be little about the activity of surveiling in preparation for committing a crime on English Wikipedia or Wiktionary, as far as I can tell. Wikipedia has one small paragraph at Crime preparation#Stalking. The classic mid-20th-century phrase was "casing the joint", which appears in many movies etc. AnonMoos (talk) 15:48, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

Her looks were "free"

One of my favourite passages from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner concerns Death (and his companion described below) appearing to the beleaguered crew. The final version Coleridge published runs like this:

Her lips were red, her looks were free,
Her locks were yellow as gold:
Her skin was as white as leprosy,
The Night-Mair Life-in-death was she,
Who thicks man's blood with cold.

I've always loved the juxtaposition of the attractive features and the horrifying ones. Earlier versions (Coleridge loved to edit his work) are different, but the part I'm interested is basically the same: how should "free" be interpreted here? I'm not sure it really matches anything on Wiktionary. Her looks were... unconstrained? Coleridge specifically used obsolete or dated terms in Rime, so it's very possibly an out of date usage. What would be a more modern synonym here? Matt Deres (talk) 17:46, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

I interpret looks as referring to her way of looking (and not her visual appearance), and free as not subdued or reserved (as behooves a proper and prim maiden), but bold.  --Lambiam 19:47, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

So, in the middle of describing her physical attributes, he described her method of gazing around? I'm skeptical, but that interpretation hadn't occurred to me at all and I appreciate the perspective. Matt Deres (talk) 20:05, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

I take it as a perhaps somewhat extended sense of Wiktionary's sense 1.2, bordering on "licentious". Deor (talk) 20:12, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

Link Wiktionary:free: "2. Unconstrained by timidity or distrust - Synonyms: unreserved, frank, communicative". Alansplodge (talk) 22:53, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

From Domesticity and Uncanny Kitsch in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and Frankenstein by Sarah Webster Goodwin:

"Her looks were free" is one of those conventional phrases we understand without trying: he is talking about sexual freedom, but with a price tag. I do not mean to suggest that LIFE-IN-DEATH comes right off the streets of London; she has been turned into something more seemingly archetypal than that. But like Blake's harlot, she carries an apocalyptic burden that also possesses its share of contemporaneity. Here, however, the social commentary is more deeply buried.

I'm not sure that "we understand without trying" is terribly helpful here, but she seems to be agreeing with Deor's comment above. Alansplodge (talk) 22:45, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

I think that "uninhibited" would be the modern equivalent, but less poetic. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 07:15, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

At a time when females were expected to show a good deal of inhibition. Alansplodge (talk) 14:07, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

Okay, I'll buy that. So, she appeared bold and uninhibited, with an undertone of sexuality? Maybe fresh (8th sense) would be a good synonym? Matt Deres (talk) 14:42, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

Sense 8 lacks the hint of sexual boldness that I think (perhaps wrongly) Coleridge intended (and Wictionary's sense 8 was not what I was expecting, the entry seems to omit the colloquial usage I understand from mid-20th-century North American prose, but which is not widely used in Britain). In the context of the late British 18th-century mores of the educated (because poetry-reading) audience whom Coleridge was addressing, I think wanton (no sense specified, because poetry) would be closer to his (perhaps deliberately intentionally ambiguous) intention. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.122.0.58 (talk) 18:19, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

The long-suppressed first draft is perhaps clearer - "Her looks were free, her favours cheap /Her bust was known as the lover's leap /Her eyes were blue, her locks were fair /And under her skirts her arse was bare". DuncanHill (talk) 18:42, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

Or the second: "Her looks were free, her favours freer. / She could be had for a can (15 oz.) of beer." (Oops, spillage from another RD question.) Clarityfiend (talk) 05:44, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

I'm reminded of William Wordsworth's lines in his 1798 poem 'Thorn':

Not five yards from the mountain path,

This Thorn you on your left espy;

And to the left, three yards beyond,

You see a little muddy Pond

Of water, never dry;

I've measured it from side to side:

'Tis three feet long, and two feet wide.

Perhaps not his finest hour. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.122.59.177 (talk) 20:58, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

J. K. Stephen summed him up well:

Two voices are there: one is of the deep;

It learns the storm-cloud's thunderous melody,

Now roars, now murmurs with the changing sea,

Now bird-like pipes, now closes soft in sleep:

And one is of an old half-witted sheep

Which bleats articulate monotony,

And indicates that two and one are three,

That grass is green, lakes damp, and mountains steep:

And, Wordsworth, both are thine: at certain times

Forth from the heart of thy melodious rhymes,

The form and pressure of high thoughts will burst:

At other times -- good Lord! I'd rather be

Quite unacquainted with the A.B.C.

Than write such hopeless rubbish as thy worst.

DuncanHill (talk) 13:20, 20 June 2021 (UTC)