Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 261, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 November 1911 — Phrases and Their Use. [ARTICLE]

Phrases and Their Use.

How 1b it that the phrase “well alight” is used in all descriptions of disastrous fires; in the news items, in the underlines of illustrations, in the very report of the firemen to headquarters? Whence this suggestion of satisfaction? Does it come from some sympathy with the energy of fire, such as SL Francis of Assisi confessed when he would not deprive the “jocund fire” of its prey—his shirt? “Chasfte water,” “Jocund fire” —what a poet was that saint, by the way. But “well alight” seems rather to have more obscure reference to some unsaintly pleasure in tyranny, expressed also by the common phrase “a good whipping,” "a good ducking.” The latter sayage journalese is applied to ill-fed and 111-clad little boys when they go through the ice. Well-fed skaters “sustain immersion.” —London Chronicle.