View single post by Widow
 Posted: Sat Apr 5th, 2008 02:20 pm
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Widow
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Joined: Tue Sep 19th, 2006
Location: Oakton, Fairfax County, VA
Posts: 321
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Mana: 
 We've all read or heard "the late unpleasantness."  In the 19th century it was common, I believe, to use "late" as a synonym for "recent."

As in "What have you been reading lately?" and "the latest fashions."

A friends whose parents escaped from the Russian Revolution grew up hearing the phrase "the late tsar" (killed in 1918). She continued to use it herself out of lifelong habit, as if it were one word.

Widow