Is left. Or wrong. Does that mean that left = wrong?
My wife received a call on the way home from a party, then told me about it:
“He asked whether I’d left the party, because he’d left his scarf. I said I’d find out if anyone was left there.”
Left = “departed,” then “didn’t take,” then “still present.”
Didn’t I do this bit on ROM a while back? I’m too lazy to check.
I don’t know. But you weren’t in the car when Pauline said it.
Yes, left is wrong and right is right. This is true in many languages.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-handed#Social_stigma_and_repression_of_left-handedness
And, as your lovely wife has noted, “left” is very flexible. Based on your previous screed, I think you could compose an entire novel using only the words “You” and “Left”.
Kevin, I’m sure that the fact that “right” means both “correct” and “opposite of left” isn’t a coincidence. I wouldn’t even be sure which definition came first, and implied the other.
The OED (God bless its soul) gives us a quote for “In accordance with facts or the truth of the case” from 950, but the earliest it has for the direction is 1300.
But I assume that both words were in use in some form before English was written.