All The King's Men
By Steven Jonathan Rummelsburg
Sitting atop his ivory wall, the pedantic egghead Humpty Dumpty tells Alice that any word he uses means "just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less." "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things." Humpty Dumpty deflects: "The question is. . . .which is to be master – that's all." Humpty Dumpty means master in the sense of ruler, the one who holds power over the word. But "master" carries an older sense that he has discarded: the ancient term for teacher (magister), whose authority ought never to be power…
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