Biblical Hebrew Forum

[David Kummerow <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com>]

Hi James,

I've thought about this a little more and even the fastest action 
possible for a given animal may sometimes be acceptably referred to with 
"plod". Eg:

(1) The horse was plodding at a gallop.

In this example, the horse will be moving at maximum speed. "Plodding" 
refers to the sound of the movement, not the speed of the movement.

Regards,
David Kummerow.


> Hi James,
>
> > Hi David,
> >
> > I believe this has already been demonstrated to you. It's all a case 
> > of relativity. If we say somebody runs quickly we expect their run 
> > pace to be above average run pace. When we imagine somebody plodding 
> > quickly we expect the plod pace to be quicker than average but still 
> > somewhat slower than average walking pace. Your use of the word 
> > 'quickly' does not mean that the person was moving quickly. It just 
> > means that their plod pace was quicker than average.
>
> James, I've already told you that the use in Australian English has no 
> contextual relativity implied. Sure, "plod" has been chosen because the 
> meaning of the word is suitable to designate "walking" vis-a-vis 
> "running". But the use I'm referring to can also be used of running. 
> Probably not sprinting, but running would be acceptable. The use has to 
> with heaviness or sound, not slowness. And like I already stated, it is 
> quite difficult to see how "slow" is the pure uncancellable semantics of 
> the word in any case -- as if "plod" means "slow". It does not. It means 
> "laborious walking" or "doing action indicated by adjunct phrase slowly" 
> or "heavy walking".
>
> Regards,
> David Kummerow.