{"id":699,"date":"2019-01-16T13:52:43","date_gmt":"2019-01-16T18:52:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/?p=699"},"modified":"2019-01-17T11:27:55","modified_gmt":"2019-01-17T16:27:55","slug":"word-of-the-week-gadfly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/2019\/01\/16\/word-of-the-week-gadfly\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Week! Gadfly"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/files\/2019\/01\/MLK.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-700\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/files\/2019\/01\/MLK-212x300.jpg\" alt=\"Martin Luther King Jr.\" width=\"212\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/files\/2019\/01\/MLK-212x300.jpg 212w, https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/files\/2019\/01\/MLK.jpg 280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 212px) 100vw, 212px\" \/><\/a>Reading Martin Luther King Jr.&#8217;s &#8220;Letter from Birmingham Jail&#8221; had a transformative effect on my sense of justice and, frankly, rhetoric. It remains a masterpiece of persuasive writing; several words and metaphors that Dr. King employ struck me, as a college student, with their power.\u00a0 Re-reading it today, one word, really a metaphor that has long been a favorite of mine, stands out.<\/p>\n<p>The word &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.oed.com\/view\/Entry\/75959?redirectedFrom=gadfly&amp;\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">gadfly<\/a>&#8221; in one sentence speaks entire paragraphs, both for its seeming innocence but also for its referencing Socrates&#8217; <em>Apology<\/em>, where the doomed Greek philosopher discussed the need for someone like him to stir a lazy nation, just as a gadfly stirs a lazy horse. King writes &#8220;we must see the need of having nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men to rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>King calls here for nonviolence, as did Socrates before him, but nonviolence with an edge to it. The word itself, with &#8220;gad&#8221; of Scandinavian origin, is a cousin to our &#8220;goad,&#8221; for spurring action. When used for a person who provokes action, the term dates to the 17th Century.<\/p>\n<p>I rather like gadflies. I don&#8217;t think that Dr. King would mind my calling him one. We could currently use more of them, and it&#8217;s a credit to Dr. King that he advocated goads, not bullets.<\/p>\n<p>Please nominate a word or metaphor useful in academic writing by e-mailing me (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or leaving a comment below.<\/p>\n<p>See all of our Metaphors of the Month\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/tag\/metaphor-of-the-month\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>\u00a0and Words of the Week\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/tag\/word-of-the-week\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><em>Public Domain image courtesy of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Martin_Luther_King_Jr.#\/media\/File:Martin_Luther_King,_Jr..jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Wikipedia<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reading Martin Luther King Jr.&#8217;s &#8220;Letter from Birmingham Jail&#8221; had a transformative effect on my sense of justice and, frankly, rhetoric. It remains a masterpiece of persuasive writing; several words and metaphors that Dr. King employ struck me, as a college student, with their power.\u00a0 Re-reading it today, one word, really a metaphor that has &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/2019\/01\/16\/word-of-the-week-gadfly\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Word of the Week! Gadfly<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":589,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2516,87405,1172,87399,40197],"tags":[2522],"class_list":["post-699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-writing","category-etymology","category-language","category-metaphor","category-vocabulary","tag-word-of-the-week"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcsCNV-bh","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/589"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}