I thought the comment made a loud hollow “clunk” and was while probably meant as a joke (after all Cecil has dodged the when does life begin question a long time), it lacked the usual wittiness and ironic sensibility of a Cecil jab.
I’m really disappointed in Cecil. I had assumed that a guy who spends his life fighting ignorance would have figured out by now that “immolation” has absolutely nothing to do with fire. Doesn’t Cecil have a dictionary? Doesn’t anybody have a dictionary? Maybe Cecil could address the question why so many people have formed this insane “immolation”/“fire” association. I suspect it dates from a report of Vietnamese Buddhist monks “immolating themselves” in protest by setting themselves on fire. The reporter knew that “immolate” means “sacrifice,” but readers focussed on the method.
The American Heritage Dictionary sez
im¥mo¥late (²m2›-lEt1) tr.v. im¥mo¥lat¥ed, im¥mo¥lat¥ing, im¥mo¥lates.
- To kill as a sacrifice.
- To kill (oneself) by fire.
- To destroy.
Silly me. I’d forgotten that you can get anything into a dictionary nowadays. My point is that it was an error to use the word “immolate” in sense (2). The mistake has become so popular that some dictionaries have given up the fight and admitted the
misuse into English, in spite of the complete absence of connection with the word’s etymology. Does the American Heritage Dictionary also have an entry under “nucular” ?
Anyway, I’ll surrender and admit that a dictionary’s business is to document usage, not to correct it, but it’s Cecil’s business to stamp out ignorance before it gets into dictionaries. Come on, Cecil, we’ve lost the battle for the American Heritage, but we can still regroup and defend the OED!
I took it as a joke and thought it was funny, if it was meant to be serious then he has the right to his opinion. My only question is how do the woman stay in the fire? I would think that after about two seconds they would be fighting to get back out or rolling around…
With respect to what is this an error? Is there some Platonic heaven wherein words have fixed definitions, unchanging for all eternity, and against which all usages may be judged forevermore?
You yourself proposed a “connection with the word’s etymology” when you said
Besides, the original meaning of the word appears to be “grinding”, as in grinding meal. It then came to refer to the sprinkling of meal on sacrificial victims (cite). So it looks like we’ve already deviated from the true and original Platonic meaning once sacrifice comes into the picture at all.
No.
mjassels, where do you get the impression that Cecil associates “immolate” with fire? He says, “One instance in 1987 became a cause celebre, with some Indian women, believe it or not, demanding the right to immolate themselves.” It sounds to me like you’re making the same mistake that those hypothetical readers of that report on Vietnamese Buddhist monks made. Furthermore, Merriam-Webster dates self-immolation, meaning “a deliberate and willing sacrifice of oneself often by fire”, to 1817. I hardly think it’s fair to blame Cecil for not stamping this one out before it got to the dictionaries—I mean, he couldn’t have been more than four or five at the time.
Unfortunately, this premise, if this was indeed the point Cecil was trying to make, is faulty. Abortion is permissable in India. Hinduism apparently has no injunction against it. See Religious Voices Worldwide. If that was the aim, he could have made some crack about how Westerners regularly “immolate” cows and call it a barbecue, which an Indian would find morally and religiously offensive. But instead he takes a swipe at women. Ouch.
Like many, I found his last comment to be very antagonistic toward women in general. I take offense at that, and not just because I am one. So, all of our choices end in the death of someone or something? Then please explain how my choice to continue the pregnancies of both of our children, at great personal risk to myself, resulted in anyone’s death? Our son is now 19, and our daughter just turned 17. My choice to get married has not resulted in anyone’s death as far as I know. My choices of friends, churches to attend, etc, have not. I think you get my point.
As for the abortion aspect alluded to by your comment, well, that is a matter of personal choice, true. Personally, for me, that was never an option, even when I was warned of danger to myself. I am very much anti-abortion. I am also very much pro-choice. It constantly amazes me that so many supposedly intelligent people think the two views are mutually exclusive, but that is drifting off topic.
This is the most anti-women comment I have ever seen Cecil make, and I certainly hope it will be the last.
I thought much better of you, Cecil.
Apparently Cecil, by his comment, was tweaking noses for a bit of humor.
So I ask myself, was his comment funny?
No. Ill-timed, yes, but unfunny in any context. At least, to me.
Now I have read a number of comments on this, and I still don’t get it. It does not help that these attempts at explanation are contradictory.
This happens sometimes: Cecil writes something STUPID and his defender/worshipers write spirals to show how he is being witty or ironic or intelligent.
If there is any humor in the whole discussion, it is the idea that Cecil said that woman-choice yields death. When I think of man-choice, I think of the Mongol invasion, the Crusades, the Holocaust, and the World Trade Center.
FTR: I am a man, but I’m gay, so it could be that my humor is too sophisticated to catch Cecil’s manly wit.
Garrett
I haven’;t heard suttee/sati described as self-sacrifice. Suicide, yes. Act of devotion to a dead husband, yes. Sacrifice, no. That leads me to conclude that Cecil is fixated on the fire thing.
Hmm. That’s interesting, because neither my Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary (1974), nor my Oxford Paperback Dictionary (1983) makes any reference whatsoever to firy suicide under immolate or self-immolation. Admittedly, neither of these is as impressive as the full-sized editions, but surely the editors would not have conspired to suppress this putative meaning in the common household versions of their works while exposing it to the cognoscenti in the big books. So, I have to ask, how come Merriam-Webster changed its mind after 1974 and decided that self-immolation has meant setting oneself on fire since 1817?
I’ve been a fan of Cecil’s for over a decade. I am amazed and hurt that this great intellect would make such an ignorant comment. Part of Cecil’s value is that he has no shame…but this statement puts him on the side of Hitler and the devil.
Shame on Cecil.
Mike Dowling
And if I remember right, another meme that has developed over the net is that once the words Hitler or Nazi are mentioned, that person has just admitted that his side of the arguement is lost. In this case, I would say the anti-abortion/pro-life side has won this.
He DID say “odd commonality” when referring to the comparison, so I would think that he was referring specifically to those items and not at women as a whole. And yes, I did get the “Men. . .twin towers” comparison (why kill yourself when you can cut the knife across thousands???)
It’s kind of sad, though. . .nobody got the cartoon. If Cecil was demeaning women, would he have let THAT get past him?
I dunno, it looks like another woman choosing to kill something to me 
According to Lindsey Harlan’s book ‘Religion and Rajput Women: The Ethic of Protection in Contemporary Narratives’ the practice of sati has religious and protective connotations. The Rajput word for wife, pativrata, means ‘one who has taken a vow [to protect] her husband’ (p.45). A wife is to do her own duty as a wife and woman and ensure that her husband carries out his own duty as well. If a woman’s husband dies before her it is because she did not fulfill her duty as protector of her husband. To atone for this failing she commits sati.
It is said that only a pure woman can become a sati (or one who has committed the act of sati) because the woman does not burn from the physical fire of the funeral pyre but from her own inner heat, or sat. This sat is accumulated from a living a life of goodness and devotion.
Further fulfilling their role as protector, a sati can, before ascending to the funeral pyre, bestow blessings, curses, or prohibitiions upone people, usually her family. It is assumed that, even when the sativrata (one who has taken a vow to become a sati) pronounces a curse or prohibition, it is not out of malice but for the family’s own good.
Support for the concept behind sati can be found in the two great Indian epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. In both books the main female character dies before her husband(s). By this action both Draupadi and Sita uphold their status as proper women and prove that they fulfilled their duty of protecting their husband(s). Had either one died before her husband(s) her untimely death would have demonstrated that she was not a pure woman, thus contradicting the image of her throughout the book.
Hi, rarely post but figured this needs comment. 
Hyperelastic- “Cecil’s implication that abortion equals death is silly”, well it isn’t really silly. You still “kill” a bacterial culture, even if it is human bacteria. Since whether a human is killed or not is the crux of the whole debate you are merely restating one side of it.
My real problem with Cecil’s parting shot is that it assumes abortion is some Western phenomena. In reality only abortion controversy is Western. Japan just recently legalized the pill but has had legal abortion since the 50’s. India has had legal abortions since the early 70’s. China’s 1 child policy doesn’t get enforced without abortions. Nobody phones in bomb threats to their clinics however. The creepy part of the Eastern abortion scene is the ugly sex-selection aspect.
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/grhf/SAsia/suchana/0510/khan_etc.html
I for one didn’t get the cartoon–is that a wishbone stuck up his butt?
There are a lot of newbies in this thread–welcome one and all!
It’s hard to believe the locution was accidental, containing as it does so many buzzwords, but since Cecil is an anonymous construct, no one can be called to the dock to defend or explain its use. It’s unfortunate to see this venerable column called into the service of partisan ends. I’ll never read it with the same eyes.
If Cecil is fighting ignorance, that statement set him back
a few years. He says that, "WHEN a woman in either hemisphere exercises her right to choose, somebody (or something) winds up dead.
So, when a woman exercises her right to choose a candidate in an upcoming election, something winds up dead?
Illogical, asinine, and completely preposterous.
I think he was trying to deflect any ethnocentric comments we might have about Hinduism after reading his article by showing a (faint) correlation between our societies, but his wording was completely inprecise, and his analogy (between abortion and suttee) a complete fallacy.
He should be held accountable for his statements (especially considering he makes money off the column and he [egotistically or jokingly?] advertises he is fighting against ignorance).
Anyways, a little bit of respect for him is lost…
colin