We get letters (kinda)

One of the pitfalls of being anonymously pseudonymous is that nobody knows where to write to you. But we do have some loyal commenters, who are themselves anonymously pseudonymous, or just anonymous. Unfortunately, the only way we can write back is to do it here.

Anonymous asks: "By the way, why does it always say 'we' when you post?"

Smarter Hogville responds: We suppose you've never heard of the "royal We," as in Queen Victoria saying, perhaps apocraphyally, "We are not amused" and referring only to herself. But in our case, we use "we" because we are plural. More specifically, this blog is the result of a collaboration.

Anonymous complains: "'Just deserts' - a new saying coined by legal experts at 'Smarter' Hogville. Nevermind the 'Just desserts' saying, we like deserts better..."

Smarter Hogville responds: It really wasn't necessary to give us eight selected definitions of "desert" to get the point across. It was also gratuitous to say "'Smarter' Hogville you (plural) are certainly not." But, as it turns out, we were right, as usual, and in a moment, we will prove why we are, in fact, Smarter Hogville. But first we have to wonder what on earth might have given the commenter the impression that we were "legal experts."

The term "just deserts" may be a bit trite, but it doesn't have much to do with an arid, barren place or anything to do with a sweet treat. To quote the American Heritage Dictionary:

When Shakespeare says in Sonnet 72, "Unless you would devise some virtuous lie,/To do more for me than mine own desert," he is using the word desert in the sense of "worthiness; deserving," a word perhaps most familiar to us in the plural, meaning "something that is deserved," as in the phrase just deserts. This word goes back to the Latin word dēservīre, "to devote oneself to the service of," which in Vulgar Latin came to mean "to merit by service." Dēservīre is made up of dē-, meaning "thoroughly," and servīre, "to serve." Knowing this, we can distinguish this desert from desert, "a wasteland," and desert, "to abandon," both of which go back to Latin dēserere, "to forsake, leave uninhabited," which is made up of dē-, expressing the notion of undoing, and the verb serere, "to link together." We can also distinguish all three deserts from dessert, "a sweet course at the end of a meal," which is from the French word desservir, "to clear the table." Desservir is made up of des-, expressing the notion of reversal, and servir (from Latin servīre), "to serve," hence, "to unserve" or "to clear the table."

So, we hope this clears up for our anonymous commenter any confusion over what was meant. And all this talk of dessert has made us hungry for some ice cream.