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Michel please fix the twit list
Message
From
12/12/2008 16:24:01
 
 
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Forum:
Level Extreme
Category:
Other
Miscellaneous
Thread ID:
01365389
Message ID:
01367084
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28
>>>>
>>>>Suffering fools gladly demeans the intellectual level of the community and is therefore an anti-social act. More importantly, having to do so causes stress.
>>>
>>>Charles, can you rephrase? I do not fully understand the first part of the first sentence.
>>
>>In this context it means believing what someone is saying is foolish or "utter nonsense" but having to pretend their argument is worth debating.
>
>Charles, believe me, I've really tried hard to understand this sentence. But I can't. I hardly dare to ask you to rephrase again.

I realize this is a language issue and regards an idiom. Your English is so good it is easy to forget you are not a native speaker (though being Dutch is probably the next best thing ;-)

The expression "suffer fools gladly" is an idiom - perhaps going back to Shakespeare - that means to be kind and patient in an argument even when you strongly disagree. To say that you do not "suffer (meaning here "tolerate" or "pay attention to") fools (meaning here simply people with whom you strong disagree or whose arguments you think have little logical merit) gladly" means that you find it difficult ( or stressful ;-) ) to argue with someone whose style or arguments you find annoying or not particularly interesting.

As I am also a student of language I often find such explanations helpful as I know idiom often doesn't translate easily and as I look at this one I can easily see how it is obscure to anyone (including a lot of native English speakers) who haven't heard it used often in context.


Charles Hankey

Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
- Thomas Hardy

Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.

-- T. S. Eliot
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
- Ben Franklin

Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
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