![]() Now, those of you out there with your iPads and your desktop computers checking your OEDs, I know you’re about to say, It says “obsolete, rare.” And that’s true: they have just one quotation containing the word, and it’s from 1657. It’s also in the Oxford English Dictionary. I’ll tell you this: it’s in God’s dictionary. You say it’s not in your dictionary? Maybe you just don’t have a big enough dictionary. Write this down: this is the Law of Words: if one person uses an integral lexeme – that’s a thing used as a word, treated like a word – to mean something, and the person hearing it understands it to mean what it was intended to mean, then that’s a word, brother. And maybe this is the one and only time you’ll hear it, but that doesn’t make it not a word if he used it and you understood. He was not broken, or sullied, or even had a little fingerprint on him like you’d need to get our your handkerchief and wipe off. He was a man of integrity.īut again, are you asking, Why not just say “He was a man of integrity”? Well, I ask you, is there more integrity in using several words when you can use one? You say it’s not a word, but he used it and you understood it. And integritas comes from in meaning “not” and a root related to tangere “touch”. Integrous comes from Latin integritas, “wholeness, completeness, purity, integrity”. He was not divided – he didn’t say one thing one way and another thing another. ![]() It means, as a man, he was one – that’s one, the first integer, that’s integer as in whole number, because he lived his life in a whole, uncorrupted way. So maybe we’ll make some allowances. But, now, I want you to ask yourself, Is that a display of grammatical integrity? Is that an integrous use of English? Do you – can you – will you recognize that word, integrous? Now, he was speaking in a friendly, somewhat folksy style, one of those styles where you might interrupt and reframe a sentence midway through, but also with some degree of a sound of erudition. What he said was – he was talking about his father – he said his father was “an integrous man.” That’s integrous with the stress on the teg. But one thing he said caused me to pull out my Lett’s and write something down. I won’t discuss my overall estimation of what he was saying, as this is not a theology tasting note (but hint: I wasn’t in complete agreement with it). The guy who was first singing, then talking, was a fellow called Mike Murdock. We happened on a program on Inspiration TV called Campmeeting (when I was a kid living on an Indian reserve, we went to quite a few camp meetings, and they were exactly nothing like this program… but that’s a separate matter). She’s unable to get out to church now, so we were looking for a suitable substitute on TV. She’s a very nice person, a woman who has always lived a life of utmost integrity but has never been an agelast. She lives in a Free Methodist nursing home now. I was visiting my grandmother in the US last weekend.
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