From: Judy Seigel (jseigel@panix.com)
Date: 08/31/02-08:58:14 PM Z
On Sat, 31 Aug 2002, Jack Fulton wrote:
> Steve:
> A 'palimpsest' (comes from the Latin root of scraping) is a blank tablet
> that has been scraped clean of prior use. In the recent past year or so, a
> tablet was found that contained prior records of, as I remember, Euclid's
> thoughts on some geometric postulate . . or, hey, maybe it was Archimedes.
> Anyway, it had been erased and re-used.
But I believe the connotation of the word, at least as I've seen it used,
is that some or possibly effect of the original writing remains. Thus a
writer speaks of a memoir, or story, as a palimpsest of the past.
J.
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