Blandishment: Word of the Day<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Blandishment<\/em>, as\nmuch as it sounds like some sort of condiment, actually means \u201cflattering\nspeech designed to persuade or coax,\u201d or \u201cthe act of persuasion by means of\nflattery,\u201d according to the Wordgenius website, where it is today\u2019s Word of the\nDay. The www.etymonline.com<\/a> website\nsays it arises in the language in the 1590s, along with a plural form,\nblandishments, which means “that which pleases, allurement.” It comes\nfrom we call, in linguistics, the addition of a derivational morpheme; in other\nwords, we add something to the word to create a new word or a word of a\ndifferent grammatical class. In this case, the original word is the verb blandish<\/em>, to which is added the bound\nmorpheme \u2013ment<\/em> (bound<\/em> means that it is not a morpheme that can stand by itself as a\nword, and a morpheme is simply a unit of speech). According to the etymonline\nsite, blandish comes into the language in the 14th<\/sup> century and means\n\u201c\u2019to flatter,\u2019 from Old French blandiss-<\/em>, present participle stem\nof blandir<\/em> \u2018to flatter, caress,\u2019 from Latin blandiri<\/em> \u2018flatter,\nsoothe, caress, coax,\u2019 from blandus<\/em> \u2018smooth-talking,\nflattering, alluring,\u2019 perhaps from PIE root *mel-<\/strong><\/a> (1)\n\u2018soft.\u2019 OED reports it rare in 17c., 18c., and[Samuel] Johnson [the writer of\nthe first English dictionary based upon linguistic principles] says he knows it\nonly from [John] Milton [author of Paradise\nLost<\/em>, \u2018Areopagitica,\u2019 and other poetry and prose].\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n On this date in 1741, Elizabeth of Russia (Yelizaveta\nPetrovna, 1709-1961) orchestrated a coup\nd\u2019etat<\/em> and became the Empress of Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Elizabeth, as her name tells us, was the daughter of Peter,\nin this case Peter I the Great (reigned 1682-1725) and Catherine I (reigned\n1725-1727). She was, by all accounts, a beautiful, vivacious, and somewhat vain\ngirl, though intelligent and popular. She was not much involved in the ruling\nof Russia during the reign of her nephew, Peter II (reigned 1727-1730), who\nbecame Emperor at the age of eleven but obviously died young, nor during the\nreign of her aunt, Anna Ivanovna (reigned 1730-1740), daughter of Ivan V, who\nwas the older brother of Peter the Great, and who was co-ruler but, because of\nhis mental instability, really didn\u2019t do much. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But upon the death of Anna Ivanovna, Ivan VI, a cousin of Elizabeth\nand only 2 months old at the time of his succession, became the Emperor, with\nhis mother, Anna Leopoldovna as the regent (actually, a man was first made\nregent, but he fell after just three weeks). And one would have to suppose that\nthe relationship between Elizabeth and Anna Leopoldovna wasn\u2019t all that great,\nbecause the regent threatened to lock her away in a convent. But there is more\nto the story than just personal dislike. Anna came from German stock, and the\norientation of the country had been very much toward Germany. But the French\nambassador and some members of the Russian court who were more pro-French and\npro-Austrian convinced her that she should take the throne. They probably\nflattered her, and she was popular among the guards. So she did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As Empress, Elizabeth kept an elaborate court. She was\ninterested in Western fashions, in the arts, and in letting her advisers run\nher government. The gentry re-acquired powers over the peasants that had been\ntaken away during the reign of her father, Peter the Great. She also passed\nsome very strange laws, like one that required French fabric salesmen to sell\nto her first, so that she had first dibs on anything. She held elaborate balls\nwith, in one case, 1000 bottles of champagne. She had one woman lashed across\nthe face for wearing a gown too similar to her own. She reserved her anger for\ntwo types of people, those who threatened the security of Russia, and those\nwhose beauty rivaled her own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One can imagine what it must have taken to rise in Elizabeth\u2019s\ncourt\u2014flattery. She had to be the most beautiful and best dressed woman\nwherever she went. She had to be admired. After she died in December of 1761,\nshe lay in state for six weeks, and she was reported to have been as beautiful\nin death as she had been in life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But during her reign, the Russian Orthodox Church regained\nmuch of the power that it had lost during the reign of Peter the Great, power\nthat it had abused in the past and would abuse in the future. The ruling class\nalso regained power. And the money spent on elaborate clothing and art and\nentertainment was money that hurt the Russian people. She never married (her fianc\u00e9\ndied before their marriage) and never had children, so she chose Peter III as\nher heir, but he served only one year before his wife, Catherine II the Great,\ndeposed him in another coup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Elizabeth I of Russia rose to become Empress of Russia\nbecause of flattery, wasted her reign on extravagance and consumption because\nof flattery, and even rejected medical treatment at the end of her life because\nof flattery. Blandishments are often the bane of good leadership. But too often\nleaders want to hear only from the flatterers, never from the critics. To be\ncritical of a leader is to risk one\u2019s life or position because, too often,\nleaders do not want to hear the truth. It doesn\u2019t matter whether such leaders\nare emperors, kings, dictators, or even just college presidents or provosts\u2014they\nthink they know it all and do not want to be contradicted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n God save me from blandishment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Portrait painted by Vigilius Eriksen in 1757, accessed from\nWikipedia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Blandishment: Word of the Day Blandishment, as much as it sounds like some sort of condiment, actually means \u201cflattering speech designed to persuade or coax,\u201d or \u201cthe act of persuasion […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4668,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4667","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\/4667","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=4667"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4669,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4667\/revisions\/4669"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}