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To most people "the latest fiction" means the latest novels or stories rather than the most recently invented pretense or latest lie. All three senses of the word fiction point back to its source, Latin ficti?, "the action of shaping, a feigning, that which is feigned." Ficti? in turn was derived from fingere, "to make by shaping, feign, make up or invent a story or excuse." Our first instance of fiction, recorded in a work composed around 1412, was used in the sense "invention of the mind, that which is imaginatively invented." It is not a far step from this meaning to the tall tale you are about tell Brink.
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CLEOPATRA BLUE
Law dogs ahead!
Okay, you know what that means. Fair warning has been issued – the head tap before your own issue, I suppose. I understand that’s said to be good manners. But I wouldn’t really know about that. I believe that my manners, when my blood is my own, are impeccable. But the ‘head tap’ – that’s what one of Tony’s forwarded lunacies called it – never occurred to me as being called for. I suppose I always take things for granted in many different ways. But it would seem to be in keeping with this grim jaunt: Glory holes and polite fingertips in a quick touch to a woman’s head.
Currituck Sound, where the rivers meet the sea, is where we’ll end. The Pasquotank and the Perquimans
But I’m thinking about the nature of telling these awful things. I just left a woman crying a few minutes ago. She relies on me immensely, mainly to grit my teeth in her stead. This seems to be something I’m... more
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