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Joined: Jan 2010
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stranger
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stranger
Joined: Jan 2010
Posts: 1 |
Hi all
I am Aalok and I really needed some help. The word "condescend" has been posing great problems as its meanings vary and I really am unable to have a visceral sense of the meaning of the word. I am writing to you to ask you to include condescend in one of your AWAD issues or send me a personal message explaining its meaning. I would also appreciate it if you could explain its meaning in the following extract. This piece has been taken from the Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas and I wish to know its meaning.
"What avails retrospection and recrimination touching circumstances wholly past recall? for my own part, I have laid aside even the name of my father, and altogether disown his political principles. He was - nay, may still be - a Bonapartist, and is called Noirtier; I, on the contrary, am a staunch royalist, and style myself de Villefort. Let what may remain of revolutionary sap exhaust itself and die away with the old trunk, and condescend only to regard the young shoot which has started up at a distance from the parent tree, without having the power, any more than the wish, to separate entirely from the stock from which it sprang."
The word doesn't make sense enough to me. I was told that it means to "stoop" in this context, but I would like an explanation from your side. I would also appreciate it if you gave me words that were synonymous to "condescend" with respect to this context.
Thanking you
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Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542 |
yes, stoop or humble oneself (literally, to descend with)
Synonyms:
accommodate, accord, acquiesce, agree, be courteous, bend, come down off high horse, comply, concede, degrade oneself, deign, demean oneself, descend, favor, grant, lower oneself, oblige, see fit, submit, talk down to, toss a few crumbs, unbend, vouchsafe, yield [some of these are much more negative in feeling than others]
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613 |
Welcome, Aalok. ...condescend only to regard the young shoot which has started up at a distance from the parent tree... Deign, in tsuwm's list, is perfect here in place of condescend. It means 'you really couldn't be expected to do this, but it would be a great favor if you would do it anyway.'
I'm guessing that English is not your first language.
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