{"id":12310,"date":"2008-10-17T08:30:04","date_gmt":"2008-10-17T08:30:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wordswarm.net\/dictionary\/soothsay.html"},"modified":"2008-10-17T08:30:04","modified_gmt":"2008-10-17T08:30:04","slug":"soothsay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/2008\/10\/17\/soothsay.html","title":{"rendered":"Soothsay"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"width\"><font face=\"arial,helvetica\">To foretell; to predict.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>I like words that use &quot;sooth&quot; as its pronunciation is harder-edged than the word &quot;soothe.&quot; Forsooth. Soothsay. Heresooth. &quot;Sooth&quot; itself is a one-syllable word but it seems to have two stresses at SOO and TH. To my ears this brings a certain desperation to the word.<\/p>\n<p>I do not have a copy of the screenplay for Oliver Stone&#8217;s film &quot;Nixon&quot; but I seem to remember hearing Mary Steenburgen use the word &quot;forsooth&quot; in a scene with her (playing Hannah Nixon) and the young Richard Nixon. It&#8217;s funny how that one word as it was used in that movie stands out in my mind even now.<\/p>\n<p>The book of Micah decries soothsayers, associating them with witchcraft, and delivering a stern warning that &quot;thou shalt have no more soothsayers.&quot;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>10 And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the LORD, that I will cut off thy horses out of the midst of thee, and I will destroy thy chariots: <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>11 And I will cut off the cities of thy land, and throw down all thy strong holds: <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>12 And I will cut off witchcrafts out of thine hand; and thou shalt have no more soothsayers: <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>13 Thy graven images also will I cut off, and thy standing images out of the midst of thee; and thou shalt no more worship the work of thine hands. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>14 And I will pluck up thy groves out of the midst of thee: so will I destroy thy cities. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>15 And I will execute vengeance in anger and fury upon the heathen, such as they have not heard. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&nbsp;Whoosh!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To foretell; to predict.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whats-the-word","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/saumAn-soothsay","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12310\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}