Is M*** B*** the most evil woman in Britain yelped the question in one tabloid headline. There have been campaigns of vilification of the woman on social networks, threats have been made against her life, the police have offered protection.
The woman, for reasons unknown, dumped a live cat (not her own) in a wheelie bin then walked away & left it there.
The cat survived to be rescued fifteen hours later. Probably did not even have to use up one of its nine lives.
Well it is the silly season & we all know that the tabloids like to have their bit of fun (don’t take everything so seriously, you old sourpuss) & the people issuing threats would probably be amazed (most of them) at the idea that we might think they would ever get round to actually carrying them out.
In the same week the papers reported the case of a woman who, with her husband, had allowed their two adopted daughters to be abused by paedophiles because one of the men had helped with money for a car.
Actually though, I’m not sure that evil is the right word for her either.
Curiously, the OED says that in modern colloquial English it is little used as an adjective, ‘such currency as it has being due to literary influence’ & has mostly been superseded by bad, although in Old English it was ‘the most comprehensive adjectival expression of disapproval, dislike, or disparagement’. A swift glance at their date charts show virtually no uses quoted since 1900 – until a DRAFT ADDITION JANUARY 2005 quoting President Reagan’s use of ‘Evil Empire’.
I am going to have to ponder this one.
