On the other hand

Harry Eyres:

I want to speak out on behalf of an oppressed minority. This is not one of those minorities one could call fashionable; its oppression might seem negligible, and perhaps most of it, in the west at least, occurred in the past. But left-handed people, who constitute about one-tenth of the population pretty much across the board, have suffered in the course of history.

The negative connotations attached to left-sidedness and left-handedness are remarkably consistent across cultures and across history. Perhaps the most striking is the Latin adjective sinister, which starts off meaning "left" or "on the left hand", but quickly (in Latin that is) acquires the secondary meanings "wrong", "perverse" and then (closer to the meaning of sinister in modern English) "unfavourable", "adverse", "ill-omened".

Posted by Jim Zellmer at January 27, 2011 1:49 AM
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