Thursday 21 January 2010

Last Stand

Last Stand

To debate the nature of intelligence needs a different thread. When faced with the cunning (but not intelligent) Dog Soldiers ISTJ of your adversary, the intelligent man says "fainites".


[a. F. intelligence (12th c. in Hatz.-Darm.), ad. L. intelleg-, intelligentia understanding, from intellegent-em INTELLIGENT: see -ENCE.]

1. The faculty of understanding; intellect.

[OE. understondan, -standan (UNDER-1 8a), = OFris. understonda, MDa. understande, MSw. undi(r)standa, OIcel. (as a foreign word) undirstanda. Cf. MLG. understân to understand, to step under, MDu. onderstaen (Du. -staan), MHG. understân, -stên (G. unterstehen), to take upon oneself, to venture, presume, etc. With a different prefix, the same use of stand appears in OE. forstandan, OS. farstandan, OHG. far-, firstantan (firstân), and MHG. verstân, -stên (G. verstehen), MDu. verstaen (Du. -staan).
In the 15th and 16th cents. three forms of the past pple. were current, viz. (a) the original understanden (also -stonden), in use till about 1550; (b) the reduced form of this, understande (-stonde), -stand (-stond), common till about 1575, and surviving into the 17th cent.; (c) the new form understanded (-stonded), very common from about 1530 to 1585. The occurrence of understanded in the Thirty-Nine Articles, xxxv, in the phrase ‘understanded of the people’, has given rise to recent echoes of it, especially in journalistic use. The modern form understood came into use in the latter part of the 16th cent., and was usual by 1600.]

I. trans.

1. To comprehend; to apprehend the meaning

OED

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