A riposte is a \u201cquick, sharp return in speech or action; a counterstroke,\u201d according to www.dictionary.com<\/a>. Synonyms would include comeback, quip<\/em>, and retort<\/em>.<\/p>\n According to www.etymonline.com<\/a>, the word comes into English from the French riposte<\/em> (17th<\/sup> century). It is originally a fencing term, meaning a quick thrust at your opponent after you have parried your opponent\u2019s lunge at you\u2014I guess you\u2019d have to know a little bit about fencing to really understand. It comes from the Italian risposta<\/em> (\u201ca reply\u201d), which is based upon the verb rispondere<\/em> (\u201cto respond\u201d), which comes from the Latin respondere<\/em> (“respond, answer to, promise in return,” from re<\/em>– “back” (+ spondere<\/em> “to pledge”). The English word respond<\/em> also comes from this Latin word, but its entrance into English happened in the 13th<\/sup> century.<\/p>\n The use of riposte<\/em> in conversation or debate is first attested around 1865, and while it is originally a noun, the use of riposte as a verb happens is first attested around 1851 (when a noun is just adapted for use as a verb with the addition of a derivational suffix, we call it functional shift).<\/p>\n You might wonder what happened to the first s<\/em> in risposta<\/em>. In linguistics, this particular sound change is called dissimilation: \u201cthe process by which a speech sound becomes different from or less like a neighboring sound, as pilgrim\u00a0 \/\u02c8p\u026al gr\u026am\/ from Latin peregr\u012bnus\u00a0 \/\u02ccp\u025br \u025b\u02c8gri n\u028as\/ and purple\u00a0 \/\u02c8p\u025cr p\u0259l\/ from Old English purpure\u00a0 \/\u02c8p\u028a\u0259r p\u028a r\u025b\/ or disappears entirely because of a like sound in another syllable, as in the pronunciation\u00a0 \/\u02c8g\u028cv \u0259 n\u0259r\/ for governor\u201d (http:\/\/www.dictionary.com\/browse\/dissimilation<\/a>).<\/p>\n Three birthdays of note for March 19: Sirhan Sirhan (for those of you who aren\u2019t old enough, he was the guy who murdered Robert Kennedy when \u201cBobby\u201d was running for the presidential nomination for the Democratic Party back in 1968), Casey Anthony (if you don\u2019t remember, she was acquitted for the murder of her 2\u00bd-year-old daughter back in 2011, though most of America wondered how), and Harvey Weinstein.<\/p>\n What can you say to someone who has used his position of authority to try to force you women to have sex with him? What kind of community allows such a person to thrive for decades? And then members of that community pretend that they are holier than everyone else! Anyone have a riposte for that?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The image: Sabre duel of German students of about 1900, painting by Georg M\u00fchlberg (1863-1925).<\/p>\n Image shows two members of German student fraternities fighting a sabre duel which is regarded a fighting with deadly weapons and has always been forbidden. A sabre duel was not a “Mensur” in the modern sense of the word. They were practised in Germany until about 1935.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Paul Schleifer A riposte is a \u201cquick, sharp return in speech or action; a counterstroke,\u201d according to www.dictionary.com. Synonyms would include comeback, quip, and retort. According to www.etymonline.com, the word […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2517,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-word-of-the-day","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2516"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2518,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2516\/revisions\/2518"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}