au contraire, mon ami. if used in a figurative (transferred?) sense, or in a historical novel as here:
"I write what he dictates, but I am not happy with the idea of phlogiston. I think that the results of our experiment support Stahl's theory* to an extent but don't prove it. I wish we could catch the air insde the glass and do more experiments to see how it really differs in quality from what Stahl would call the dephlogisticated air around us, but I say nothing of this to my father."
- Katharine McMahon, The Alchemist's Daughter (2006)
*Georg Ernst Stahl, German chemist chiefly remembered for the obsolete phlogiston theory.
Last edited by tsuwm; 08/14/2011 3:13 AM.
