In one of her books, Klara encountered the expression “speeding swiftly” and was incensed.
“Both words mean the same thing!” she protested. “You can’t be speeding slowly. You always speed swiftly!”
I only wish I could transmit this idea to my students.
It’s poetry.
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I think this is the first time me and the young scholar are in disagreement.
The book could’ve meant rate of acceleration. You could speed slowly, as it were, if your top speed is high but the rate you used to reach it was low.*
Could have also been simply a repetition for the sake of emphasis, to underline the point. Or just having fun with words – alliteration alleviates ills, after all.
*I recently learned that the word used to describe the rate of change of acceleration, how fast the change in speed of something itself changes, is “jerk.” So you could be jerking slowly or jerking very fast indeed. Probably not information the young scholar needs to know, though.
It’s totally the seduction of the alliteration. 🙂
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That’s delightful!
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And, you know, E.B. White would concur 😉
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She’s right. It’s sloppy alliteration. My writer side shudders. Even in poetry, there are better ways to get that rushing feeling across.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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