Hounding the hare is what a dog does when it feels like giving a rabbit a hard time.

Considering the fact that it's a hound, hounding makes perfect sense. To hound is to harass. The newscaster, Walter Cronkite, single-handedly mispronounced the word "harass" so often throughout his career that putting an emphasis on the ass became quite acceptable. Always before Mr. Cronkite's goof, "harass" was only pronounced like someone's family name if they happened to be named Harris.

It's strange that one man can have such an effect on how words are pronounced, but then I think of Castilian Spanish being created to humor the King's lisp and George W. Bush making a two-syllable word out of terrorist.

Someone must have recently told George about his error (or should I say "err?") since, have you noticed? he now gives a tiny touch of credence to the "or," when he pronounces "terrorist" in the hope of making it seem to sound somewhat like a syllable but not so much of a real syllable as to alienate the rednecks in his constituency. How's that for linguistic fence sitting? A lesser politician might have gone rabid with embarrassment. But not George. His blunder didn't worry a hare on his head. He skillfully semi-corrected it with the clever result of picking up political chips by speaking from both sides of the tongue since a complete correction would be admitting past igrorance and might lose some of the down-home folks in the process. And here we thought he was just stupid!

The primary meaning of the word "worry" as it is used today is to fret." But that use of the word only started to develop in the beginning of the 19th Century. Always before, since the 12th Century onwards, "to worry," meant to harass by teasing, biting or snapping. And it still does when the context it lies within allows it. That's what we mean when we say "The hound is worrying the hare." But is it understood by the modern ear? Probably not all that often.

So I think I'll change the title of this story to "Hounding the Hare." I truly will......when I get around to it. In the meantime, I wonder what's worrying the hare?

There must be quite a story there!

2003___Muldoon Elder