tube-rose, you poor forced
- tube-rose, you poor forced
In Mam Street, by Sinclair Lewis, a young wife tries to improve her husband’s literary taste by reading poetry to him. He is politely interested, but it is clear to her that he will not change his ways or reading habits. ‘She read with an eye cocked on him, and when she saw how much he was suffering she ran to him, kissed his forehead, cried “You poor forced tube-rose that wants to be a decent turnip!”’
The tube-rose is a flower, but not, as it happens, a rose. ‘Tube-rose’ simply means tuberous, the plant being of the amaryllis family, cultivated for its fragrant white flowers. More to the point, ‘tube-rose’ is certainly not a usual vocative. This example merely demonstrates how a specific situation can cause a particular speaker to use a particular expression to a particular person, in a way that no rule of vocative usage could possibly anticipate.
A dictionary of epithets and terms of address .
Leslie Dunkling .
2015.
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