The meaning of a word....???? - 01/31/10 04:40 PM
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
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