Elephant

About 1 pages (125 words)

Elephant Summary

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A Dictionary of Epithets and Terms of Address

Elephant

Normally what one calls someone who has just stepped on one’s toe, either the word on its own or ‘you elephant!’ There is a passage in King Solomon’s Mines, by H.Rider Haggard, which gives a different slant on this term, and reflects in passing the attitudes of a by-gone era:

‘Is it to that land that thou wouldst journey, Incubu?’ (A native word meaning, I believe, an elephant, and the name given to Sir Henry by the Kafirs.) I asked him sharply what he meant by addressing his master in that familiar way.

It is very well for natives to have a name for one among themselves, but it is not decent that they should call one by their heathenish appellations to one’s face.

This is the complete article, containing 125 words (approx. 1 page at 300 words per page).