PROBABILITIES AND WORD MEANINGS—OIL PRESS. In my literature courses at Northwestern in the late 50’s, some thirty years after the publication of SEVEN TYPES OF AMBIGUITY, the notion that different possible meanings of a word could be assigned probabilities was taken for granted. I remember in particular our discussion of God’s Grandeur by Gerard Manley Hopkins (still one of my favorite poems). Here is the text:
God’s Grandeur
The World is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
In the discussion, I proposed that the reference to “the ooze of oil pressed” was a reference to Gethsemane ( I had come across the fact that “Gethsemane” came from the Aramaic word for “oil press” (see this wikipedia article).
After some resistance from other students, Professor Mayo said, “I’ll give you one per cent on that.” I was pleased to have the one per cent.