Transcript of “To Scrape Acquaintance”
Grant, last week I decided to go back and read George Orwell’s 1984 because I was really curious whether it would frighten me as much as it did when I was in high school. And the truth is when I reread it last week, it frightened me even more.
Oh, I can imagine. But I guess it was probably also a nice linguistic trip too. This is the source, of course, the title. 1984 is often used as a dystopian reference. Big Brother comes from there. Double Speak was popularized by that book.
Right. And so I was thinking about those terms associated with the novel, but there was also a little expression that jumped out at me that I didn’t remember at all, but I really like. And that’s the expression, scrape acquaintance.
He talks in the book about this guy, Winston Smith, who’s trying in this dystopian society to get information about a possible secret rebellion. And he writes about Winston Smith making plans to get information. And he says he would go into the pub and he would scrape acquaintance with that old man and question him.
And I just love that idea of scraping acquaintance. I looked it up in the Oxford English Dictionary, and it talks about scraping acquaintance meaning to get acquainted with by careful effort and insinuation. So you’re not really befriending somebody. You’re sort of getting acquainted with somebody toward an end. Isn’t that interesting?
Nice. Yeah, that is very interesting. I’ve never heard that either. I’ll have to add that to my list of phrases to savor, but save and use just once in an important moment. Scrape acquaintance.
There’s stuff that, there’s language that you learn that you can’t just drop willy-nilly, right?
Yeah. You’ve got to keep it. And just there’s one right moment. It’s like the celebration champagne that you’re saving.
Right, right. We’d love to hear about the words and phrases that strike you when you’re reading novels 877-929-9673 or send it to us in email the address is words@waywordradio.org.
