SUBSEQUENTLY.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4488, 7 August 1875, Page 2 (Supplement)

SUBSEQUENTLY.

(From the Pall Mali Gazette.) What is the meaning of tho word “ subsequently ?” One always fancied that it was translated by tho plain English “ afterwards but hard words are sometimes used in such odd ways that it is possible that “ subsequently” may have displaced “ prior to,” in the sense of “before.” “Prior,” indeed, suggests the notion of a monastic dignity, and it may, therefore, have an unpieasing sound in the ears of good Protestants. At any rate, it seems certain that “subsequently” is used in the sense of “before” by tho writer of the article headed “A Young England Novel,’’in tho current number of Macmillan's Magazine. After speaking of tho year 1814 and the publication of “ Couingsby,” and telling us how Messrs. Earwig, Tadpole, and Taper meant Messrs.

Koss, Bouliam, and Clarke, the writer adds: “ Mr. Koss, it may be said, subsequently married Lady Mary Cornwallis, was a famous whist-player, and a Parliamentary oracle in the matter of minute precedents and details of legislative etiquette." It is hard to see what Mr. Koss’s marriage, subsequent or prior, has to do with the matter ; but, though that marriage may have happened “subsequently” to 1811, it certainly happened before that year. Sous of Mr. and Lady Mary Koss were old enough to go to school in 1836. It would be more uncharitable to suppose that the author has utterly bungled his chronology than to suppose that he has used a hard word in a sense opposite to that which it commonly bears.