Arrogant conceit
No chickens for the rest of the week, I’m exhausted from all the homework.
Instead, here is the very best ST Forum letter ever (from a couple of days ago, I won’t bother providing the link since it’ll go down in a couple more days):
Headline smacks of arrogant conceit
I REFER to the article, ‘S’pore can help Russia make its mark: MM Lee’ (ST, Oct 12).
This is an arrogant conceit. When Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew was addressing Russian academics and students, he was conscious that he was talking to a people with great technological and scientific prowess. He never said Singapore can help Russia make its mark.
Yeong Yoon Ying (Mdm)
Press Secretary to Minister Mentor
I didn’t even know something could be “a conceit”* until this letter came along and slapped those over-enthusiastic headline writers upside the head. My day is made.
* “Puffed up with conceit”, “smacks of conceit”, yes… but “a conceit” is news to me. That’s the only kind of useful news I can glean from our local papers.
October 21st, 2005 at 10:53 am
i think ‘conceit’ can actually be used as a noun even though we usually come across only the adjective form of it.
apparantly it there’re several meanings of ‘conceit’ as a noun and one of which means ‘ A fancy article’ (http://www.answers.com/conceit&r=67)
we learn a little something new everyday from ST dun we? lol
October 21st, 2005 at 11:35 am
Mdm Yeong deserves an increase in her performance bonus!
Push her up in the staff ranking I say I say.
October 21st, 2005 at 11:55 am
Didn’t you do Lit in secondary school? Conceits are a great literary device, and “conceit” as a noun is a brilliant word. But anyway, conceit in this sense seems closer to Dictionary.com’s first definition “A favorable and especially unduly high opinion of one’s own abilities or worth.”
October 21st, 2005 at 1:08 pm
Oh look, Tomorrow readers. Hello! Daryl: Nope, no lit for me after Sec 2. Hence my general incoherence.
October 22nd, 2005 at 3:32 pm
No lit for me after Sec 2 as well - such conceit on my part
October 24th, 2005 at 1:57 pm
Has anyone at SPH have any reference books at all? Like:
Strunk & White
Fowlers’ English
AP Style Manual
MLS Style Manual
Editor’s Handbook?
*horrors* the state of writing and publication in Singapore saddens me.