The Wrongs of Thomas More (Wrong 5)

A cool quote from the OED In my previous post I talked about spelunking through the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of “wrong” to see how the usage of that word had developed down through the ages. Embedded in that definition was a citation that caught my eye. But first I need to point out that “wrong” has many shades of meaning. The particular one to which the following quote applies is: “Not in consonance with facts or truth; incorrect, false, mistaken.” And one of the oldest, and certainly pithiest, examples of this usage is cited as follows: 1528 MORE Dyaloge III. Wks 210/1 Our hart euer thinketh the judgement wrong, that wringeth us to the worse. Now, that one's a beauty because it has one foot in the more ancient meaning of the word, and one in the modern. “Wringeth us to the worse” goes to the older, bending or twisting sense of the word, and means turning or wrenching us off course into a less desirable outcome. “The judgement wrong” refers to an error, a bad call. H ... Read full article.