sage

   One of the over-literary vocatives used by Charlotte Brontë in Jane Eyre is ‘sententious sage’, addressed by Mr Rochester to Jane. She has just said to him, in the middle of a philosophical discussion, ‘That sounds a dangerous maxim, sir; because one can see at once that it is liable to abuse.’ ‘Sententious sage!’ replied Rochester, ‘so it is: but I swear by my household gods not to abuse it’ He is making fun of her moralizing wisdom.

   The speaker who uses the vocative in The Critic, by Wilfrid Sheed, is well aware that the term is not in common use as a term of address. She is talking to a man who has just confidently expressed an opinion: ‘He’ll never feel better till he gets rid of that stuff.’ ‘You think so, O sage?’ she comments.

   The use of the vocative ‘O’, taken over from Latin into artificial literary prose and poetry, clearly indicates her conscious move out of ordinary colloquial speech. ‘Sage’ is of course used in its general sense of ‘wise man’.