Have you ever heard of a j'accuse, meaning an angry, accusatory speech or interrogation? (As a word, lower-cased, not as a reference to the Zola work?) I saw it in the Wall Street Journal yesterday. It was new to me, but on checking in today's Australian. The two concern the same event, so perhaps they were each copying from the same account of the event. Here are the two accounts (WSJ first).

"Listen, you knew what the banks were doing and yet were touting it for months and months," said "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart to CNBC superstar Jim Cramer in their much-discussed confrontation last week. "The entire network was, and so now to pretend that this was some sort of crazy, once-in-a-lifetime tsunami that nobody could have seen coming is disingenuous at best and criminal at worst." The applause Mr. Stewart has received for his j'accuse is the sound of the old order cracking.

The face of debauched US capitalism was … Jim Cramer, a squealing celebrity investment adviser whose cable-television show uses ka-ching sound effects. His relentless prosecutor was a greying comedian who claims he's most comfortable throwing spitballs and making fart noises. … last week's epic media war between Cramer and The Daily Show host Jon Stewart provided more insight into the roots of the global economic meltdown than the sum of regular journalism on the subject. What's more, Stewart's savage j'accuse has made him the champion of all bewildered workers who are watching their nest eggs, jobs and homes go up in pongy, panicky puffs and are wondering what the hell went wrong.

From MW: "Any strong accusation or denunciation: usually printed in italic type."

That's not MW (Merriam Webster); it's Webster's New World, which is a different publisher.

In fact, it's actually from LoveToKnow Corp., which implies it takes its definitions from W.New World. The LoveToKnow site makes me skeptical, although perhaps I'm overreacting to its heavy and flashy ad-content. It just doesn't give me the impression of being heavily into scholarship. Am I being a snob?

Well, within context, I don't have a problem with it. Zola's original letter in re l'Affaire Dreyfus is pretty widely known. Other foreign verb forms that have been nominalized: video 'I see', ignoramus 'we do not know', nolo contendere 'I will not contest'.

quote:

MW (Merriam Webster); it's Webster's New World

I've been using this software for several years and never realized it isn't MW. Amazing detective work, Shu.

Its meaning is instantly recognizable, so I like it.

quote:

Originally posted by Asa Lovejoy:
Its meaning is instantly recognizable, so I like it.

It is to you and me. But I wonder how many others would get the allusion? We probably learnt about Zola's famous article in history class. I understand that the teaching of history is much less broadly-based nowadays, so younger folk may well not have heard about it, or indeed, the Dreyfus case.

So what DO the people who are now standing in the wings, waiting to run the world know?

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" (link).

Ah, but anybody who's taken French knows that it literally translates "I accuse," so it's understandable anyway.

WM