I’m reading the first Harry Potter book, and it’s quite good. However, being an American, I am perplexed by a term used in the book, which contextually seems like common parlance on the other side of the pond:
revision
I know this word as the noun form of “to revise,” which of course simply means editing or changing a text.
As used in the book, it refers to the students’ efforts in preparing for their final exams, as in:
“She had started drawing up revision timetables and colour-coding all her notes.”
(dialogue)
“‘Anyway, what are you revising for, you already know it all.’”
See? They use the term like Americans would say “studying.” Is that all it means? Why was the word “revise” borrowed for such a purpose?
It means studying for an exam. You’ve already done the initial learning work throughout the school/study year, but now you’re going over your notes and re-reading them (seeing them again re-vise (vise coming from past tense of video “I see” in Latin) literally) as you will have forgotten things since September…
Further info http://dictionary.cambridge.org/cmd_search.asp?searchword=revise&dict=B
It gives 2 options to look up the definition in
revise(CHANGE)
revise(STUDY)
It claims that it is an english, american & australian usage. Also the defintion of revise change given here shows that you are still looking at it again, just for an active purpose (to change it rather than learn it).
Anyway, only a muggle or potions teacher would get worked up over one word in a wonderful book!
(joke, joke, honest)
Fi.
Not quite. The link you posted says “revise” meaning “to study” is an English and Australian usage, and that the American form is “review.”
This makes perfect sense to me. If the word “review” had crossed my mind, I never would’ve begun this thread.
Well, duh. I am a Muggle.
Seriously, I resisted Harry Potter for a long time, because he’s so popular. But I’m near the end of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone right now, and can report that it’s utterly delightful. Similar in tone to Roald Dahl’s best children’s books. I was won over on the very first page, at the moment I read:
“Mrs Dursley was thin and blonde and had nearly twice the usual amount of neck…”
As I understand it, J.K Rowling lives in England. According to an article I read about her, she was an unemployed, unmarried mother living in an unheated apartment in London. She started writing the Harry Potter stories to entertain her child, was convinced to submit them for publication, and the rest is history.
The characters are also supposed to be English. Hogwarts is just a few hours outside of London by train.
Interesting, Five, you seem to have gotten ahold of the British edition there… In America, they changed Philosopher’s Stone to Sorceror’s Stone. Apparently they somehow got the impression that us stupid Americans wouldn’t know what a Philosopher’s Stone was. It’s funny, when I got to the part where they finally explained what a Sorcerer’s Stone was, I exclaimed, “So why didn’t they call it a Philosopher’s Stone in the first place?!?”.
Correct, Chronos. When I learned about the title change, I was incensed. And I’m a bit of a literary purist and snob. So when the time came for me to buy the book, I ordered it from amazon.co.uk instead of the US counterpart, so I’d get it with the original title and cover art.
Now, having read it, I’m keen to know if there were any other changes made for the American edition. For example, in the chapter set at Christmastime, Harry and his friends open some “crackers,” which most Americans might be puzzled by. Were they still crackers in American editions of the book?
Incidentally, I’ve known about the “Philosopher’s Stone” of alchemical lore since I was nine or ten years old and read an issue of The Flash wherein one of Flash’s supervillains got his hands on one. Yet another example of precocious knowledge imparted to me by comic books.
I know this is a little off topic, but I gather that “public school” doesn’t mean the same thing in England that it does in America, schools open to all students from a certain area, run and funded by the state. What does it mean in England?
J.K. Rowling was born in Chipping Sodbury, England. When she returned from teaching English in Portugal, she lived in Edinburgh, Scotland. During her time there, she submitted her Harry Potter work to publishers.
A “Public School” in Britain is prescisely the opposite of the US phrase: it is really a private school, which charges fees (although I believe there is a certain amount of funding from government).
A public school is a particular type of private (ie fee-paying) school. They are usually boarding schools in part at least & not government funded (the occasional exception might be a state scholarship for someoneof extreme ability, but it is not the norm). They tend to be very long established schools like Eton or Rugby. If you or I started a fee-paying school today, even if it was a boarding school, it would probably be called a private school. The starting age is also usually different (although thanks to changes in the state curriculum in England & Wales, that is sarting to change) - traditionally a child would go to a (boarding) prep (short for preparatory) school from the age of 5 to 12 & then start public school at 13.
A private fee paying school can have government funding (there is something called the assisted place scheme which means that the government pays them the same amount as they would a state (free) school for you to go there), but usually you pay fees & usually they are only a day-school (although public schools do accept day pupils too, but charge less fees as providing less facilities).
Schools without fees are called state schools and fall into several categories - High School (v posh, probably still teach Latin), Grammar Schools (one step down) and Comprehensives (“the rest”) - that last phrase is why various Labour (socialist) governments have tried to close High & Grammar schools as they believe in providing everyone with an equal opportunity (although they do it by dragging the highest down to the lowest common denominator rather than trying to raise the level of the rest so that High Schools & Grammar Schools are no longer seen as special).
