Thanks, you lot. I reckon misdemeanour, wrongdoing, transgression and possibly iniquity are what I'm after (" then you came to the right place, ho ho!")
To explain further: I had less than half an idea recently that there might be a discussion to be had about the fact that by dropping the word sin from our vocabulary, we had lost a useful tool. There's a bit in Flann O'Brien's novel The Third Policeman where a ghost explains how he came to the conculsion that 'no' is a better answer to all questions than 'yes' (I won't go into the whole thing cos it would take all day and it's by-the-by here). The relevant bit:
"I took all my sins out and put them on the table, so to speak. I need not tell you it was a big table. I gave them all a strict examination, weighed them and viewed them from all angles of the compass. I asked myself how I came to commit them, where I was and whom I was with when I came to do them."
I really like that idea of turning actions into 'physical' objects, and feel it might be useful to be able to talk of them in this way. Turns them into things which might be dealt with more easily than actions-with-adverbs-attached, if you get me.
So anyway, I didn't want to start such a discussion and have someone pipe up "You fool! We do not have the word sin, but we do have [insert obvious replacement here]'" etc.
Misdemeanour and - now I think of it - offence seem reasonable replacements, but - I dunno - there's summat about them that doesn't quite hit the spot the way sin does. Anyone have any futher thoughts on the matter? |
