mhw
in
unusual_words
Regiment
Not an unusual word, but one with a little-known (and frequently misused and clichéd) sense.
Last week on the radio I heard someone refer to a group of women as "that monstrous regiment of women." Many people using that phrase seem to use it in (sometimes mock-) disparagement of a group of women, thinking that regiment in the phrase has the military meaning that is usual today.
Not so. John Knox, that famous Scottish Calvinist theologian and preacher, wrote and published in 1558 The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women. The regiment of the title is an old, possibly obsolete, synonym of government or régime; Knox's book was a theologically-based rant at the female (and Catholic) monarchs of his day, including Mary I of England and Mary I of Scotland, and more generally at the notion that women should ever have governance over men.
I am assured that God has revealed to some in this our age, that it is more than a monster in nature that a woman shall reign and have empire above man. - from the Preface to The First Blast ...
Last week on the radio I heard someone refer to a group of women as "that monstrous regiment of women." Many people using that phrase seem to use it in (sometimes mock-) disparagement of a group of women, thinking that regiment in the phrase has the military meaning that is usual today.
Not so. John Knox, that famous Scottish Calvinist theologian and preacher, wrote and published in 1558 The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women. The regiment of the title is an old, possibly obsolete, synonym of government or régime; Knox's book was a theologically-based rant at the female (and Catholic) monarchs of his day, including Mary I of England and Mary I of Scotland, and more generally at the notion that women should ever have governance over men.
I am assured that God has revealed to some in this our age, that it is more than a monster in nature that a woman shall reign and have empire above man. - from the Preface to The First Blast ...