Slippery Slope: Privy
LOL.
I love this forum. Tonight I am laughing at myself for not recognizing Johann Wolfgang von Goethe or his body of work. When I searched him I came across the term "privy council" and, drawing on my law school appreciation for old words, I thought about the history of the word privy. What does "privy" mean to you? To me it means toilet. And in that moment I had a vision of Donald Trump trying to build a courthouse out of locker room talk. |
Privy Council: "Geheimer Staatsrat"; according to the Collins dictionary. However, Goethe is rather called "Geheimrat" than "Geheimer Staatsrat".
Another meaning of privy is indeed "toilet" (Collins), a third one is a sort of pariticipation in juridical context. Nevertheless, your vision is cool... |
The British have the high officer known as the "Lord Privy Seal." This very old title is now completely obsolete in all it's referents, leading one modern incumbent to observe that he was "neither a Lord, nor a Privy, nor a Seal"
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I generally associate the phrase from vague memories of college British history:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privy_council However just last year the phrase figured prominently in my mind since at the end of A Storm Of Swords the Imp kills his old man Tywin Lannister with a cross-bow while the latter is sitting on a stone privy in the Tower of the Hand. |
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