Despot

This word keeps coming up in all of my reading in and around the Civil War.  Have you noticed it, too?  Do you know what it means?  I felt I understood it, but when I tried to explain it I had a harder time than I thought I would - a sure sign that I didn't have a really good grasp on the meaning.  So...

Despot:  Despotism is a form of government in which someone (it can be on person or a group of people) whole rule with absolute power.  So to go back to your studies last year and two examples would be Robespierre and Cromwell.  The word has a Greek origin which means 'master' or 'the one with the power'. 

This word has a negative meaning, or at least we use it in a negative way.  I don't think it would be a compliment to say, "Your such a great despot!"  Two words which mean the same thing that you are probably more familiar with are tyrant and dictator.

In this time period this word was being batted back and forth accusingly by both sides.  As you continue to read over the next few weeks look out for it.  Would you say that there was anyone acting as a despot in the United States during this time?  Why would this be such a common word in the writing from and about this time period?

As the semester has gone on I have not kept up with vocabulary very well.  Be on the look out for interesting words - especially those that seem to turn up often in different places!  Email them or bring them up in class, especially words you don't understand.

Propaganda & Doth

(This word was on more than one persons vocabulary list this week!)

(Someone asked in class if this poster was a political cartoon.  I said that it was a better example of propaganda)

Propaganda
Communicating information in a way that tries to influence the opinion of your audience.  Propaganda is not impartial or objective.  There is an agenda being promoted, either subtly or overtly (look those words up if needed).  By definition propaganda is technically a neutral term - you could be influencing your audience for their good.  The connotation (look it up) of this word now, however, thanks to it's most manipulative masters like Hitler, Mussolini, Mao Tse Tung and currently Kim Jong-il is negative.  But it's not just the bad guys who used it - the US produced a lot of propaganda during WWII so that citizens would support the war effort and buy US War Bonds among other things.  (I was surprised recently to find this message even in reruns of Lassie!)  You could argue that Benjamin Franklin’s political cartoon of the segmented snake was propaganda.

Doth

Ok, this one requires a little grammar (something I'm just beginning to see the value and worth of).  'Doth' is a present tense of the word 'do'.  It is a holdover from Old or Middle English.  You'll hear it in familiar quotes like this one from Shakespeare:  "The lady doth protest too much," or in poems like "How doth your garden grow?".  Sometimes it is used instead of puting a present tense 's' on a verb like in protest and sometimes it literally replaces the word does!  I'm curious whose word this was and where you read it.  Was it someone reading Irving?