I confess that I had never heard this word until today – and I regard myself as reasonably proficient in the English language. I saw the word in a comment about British politician Boris Johnson by the former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstad:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cTo Johnson\u2019s followers, however, he is more prophet than politician: only he can deliver a mythical \u2018true Brexit\u2019 that will deliver the prosperity promised during the referendum campaign.<\/p>
\u201cAs is often the case with populists, reality does not square with Johnson\u2019s ensorcelling<\/em><\/strong> combination of false promises, pseudo-patriotism and foreigner-bashing.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
I had to check the meaning of the verb and it means ‘to bewitch’. Then I thought: how come a Belgian knows more English than I do? But I found that the word has its origin in the Middle French of the 16th century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You learn something new every day – or at least you should. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I confess that I had never heard this word until today – and I regard myself as reasonably proficient in the English language. I saw the word in a comment about British politician Boris Johnson by the former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstad: \u201cTo Johnson\u2019s followers, however, he is more prophet than politician: only he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24760"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24760\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24765,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24760\/revisions\/24765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}