Colorado's "flagship" football team has had unprecedented success signing up in-state recruits. In the paper this morning: "If you look around we've just got a cesspool of talent around here."
A "cesspool of talent?" Here are two things that we know about the up-and-coming young linebacker who is credited with that sentence: a) he's never come face-to-face with a actual cesspool, and b) he's under the impression that "cess" means "large" or "deep." Is he alone? I'm afraid not. A quick googling retrieves sixty cesspools of talent, perhaps a third of which are ironic.
Shakespeare uses "cess" to mean "measure." A diseased horse, "Poor jade, is wrung in the withers out of all cess." Is it possible that our linebacker is familiar with The First Part of King Henry the Fourth? Does he believe that "cesspool" mean "immeasurable pool?
In a related matter, one of my correspondents sends me this yahoo headline: "U.S. woman abducted in Afghanistan. A Taliban snatch." Clearly, the writer is ignorant of the demotic use of the word "snatch." He should have consulted Shakespeare, one of whose nastiest characters (Aaron in Titus Andronicus) uses the word correctly: "Why, then, it seems, some certain snatch or so/ Would serve your turns."
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