WEBVTT

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It all comes down
to scholarship.

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[LAUGHTER]

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"Etymological Dirge."

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There's a part of "Amazing
Grace," that ever beloved hymn,

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that nobody ever
sings on NPR or NBC.

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And it's the stanza that has
the line "Twas grace that

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taught my heart to fear," which
is what made it beloved of me.

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"Twas grace that taught
my heart to fear."

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All of these
etymologies come from

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an etymological dictionary,
which I've been told later

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by scholars is a suspect source,
that particular dictionary.

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So no matter how hard you
try to peddle to catch up

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with the guys who really know
the discipline you're in,

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it's a hopeless enterprise.

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So this is from
the heart, forget

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the book, the other book.

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This is the book of a
certain peculiar heart,

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but I read it there.

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"Calm--" many of
these are true, I

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don't mean to disparage
the source entirely.

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"Calm comes from burning."

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I mean, we were talking
about googling at dinner.

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Don't ask me why--
because we were gurgling

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and we couldn't help ourselves.

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And really, search
is very interesting

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and also just the
derivations that you

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discover by following
trails of things

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are quite astonishing sometimes.

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And for me, the unexpected
in the scan is the thing.

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So if you're scanning across a
dictionary or an encyclopedia,

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what I'm alerted
by are the spikes

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in the EKG, the
exceptions in the pattern.

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And these, in a way, are--

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the editorial function at
work in this dictionary

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was to look for the
things, the peculiarities,

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the ones you would never
think were possible.

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Because the other stuff,
if you could already

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think it was possible, it
doesn't need to be said.

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That's why cliche is
not useful in art.

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"Calm comes from burning.

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Tall comes from fast.

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Comely doesn't come from come."

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You see the trail here.

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"Person comes from mask.

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The kin of charity is whore.

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The root of charity is dear.

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Incentive has its
source in song.

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And winning, in the sufferer.

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Afford yourself what
you can carry out.

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A coward and a
coda share a word.

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We get our ugliness from fear.

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We get our danger
from the Lord."

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You can almost feel the tracking
back from Lord to domain

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to danger somehow.

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But it doesn't quite feel
yet etymologically apparent,

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but there's a
little of it there.

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