Bailey’s Rule
Threats without power are like powder without ball.
This principle was set forth by one of the first English lexicographers, Nathaniel Bailey, in his Universal Etymological English Dictionary (1721). Not much is known about Bailey except that he lived in Stepney, a London suburb, and was a schoolteacher and Seventh-Day Baptist. Bailey also deserves credit for being one of the few dictionary-makers prior to the 1960s who was brave enough to include ‘fuck’ (defined in Latin as feminam subagitare) and other common but ‘impolite’ terms.
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