Lord Lucan: A Case of Long Overdue Lexicological Redundancies?

So the case of the fugitive earl is closed. Now, this week in a London court, ‘Lucky’ Lord Lucan, missing since 1974, is declared officially presumed dead so his son can inherit the earldom and claim the title of 8th Earl to appear on the Roll of the Peerage. 

This follows an ‘interregnum’ of the title for more than four decades, during which the fleeing nobleman was sought by Interpol as a suspect in the bludgeoning to death of the family’s nanny, Sandra Rivett, aged twenty-nine; a crime committed in mistaken belief (it is claimed but not proven) that the unfortunate victim was his estranged wife, the countess, his intended prey with whom he was embroiled in a bitter custody battle for their children.

Following the peer’s craven flight from the scene, having brutally assaulted Lady Lucan after the confused killing of Sandra in the darkened basement of their Belgravia home, the Detective Chief Superintendent investigating the case initially believed that Lucan had ‘done the honourable thing’ and committed suicide.

And the answer to the whereabouts of the missing peer? 

The aristocrat’s wife, Lady Lucan, believes her husband killed himself ‘like the nobleman he was’. 

It is known Lucan’s gambling set – and wealthy society friends of breeding – closed ranks and covered the peer’s tracks in a deliberate campaign of obfuscation compounded by the peerage and the gentry.

Diminishment of Meaning: Altisonant Terms

Which brings me to considerations of my own as to whether the debased coinage of the realm still has currency. Namely, in the context of the Lucan Affair, do not such outworn altisonant terms as Aristocrat, Breeding, Chivalry, Gentry, Honourable, Lord, Noble, etc. demand to be devalued by informed scholars in sociolinguistics when reassessed  for lexicological compilation.

To assist their studies, may I propose a neat, simple typographical device to alert the reader to an archaism so they may skip redundancies of signification in the text . . . it is a new system of downgrading certain meanings whose diminishment is as blindingly obvious as my choice of examples cited hereinabove:

aristocrat : a member of the patrician class of a social order born to rule.

breeding : the good manners regarded as characteristic of the aristocracy and conferred by heredity.

chivalry : the composite qualities that characterise an ideal knight, namely courage, honour, courtesy, justice, and a readiness to help the weak.

gentleman : an amateur cracksman found culpable of GBH with malice aforethought. GBH (Grievous Bodily Harm) is one of the post-nominal titles of a gentleman.

gentry : the establishment elite, the county set, the privileged classes.

honour : the quality of knowing and doing what is morally right.

lord : a feudal superior.

noble : possessing or demonstrating edifying personal qualities or high moral principles.

Admittedly such a system has its drawbacks. I recognise there is a danger, when cross-referencing terms in the texts (see examples shown), that progressive citations could lead to a type size so infinitesimally small that some words would vanish altogether. But hang on! Isn’t that the essence of the scheme!

PS: For more of the low-down on altisonant rats, see Sussex Exodus of Altisonant Rats. . .

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/sussex-exodus-of-altisonant-frogs.html

Missing from this melange of newsprint is
the Morning Star, which long ago solved the problem
of compounding for all time its withering contempt 
for Nazism. You will search in vain for a Nazi;
in its Style Book it is always ‘nazi’.