11/13/25
I've just finished posting a replacement video, and as promised, I give a stronger example of Dickens starting a word and realizing it was incriminating, so that he stopped after the first two or three letters. The URL is:

https://youtu.be/1tNRA12ivQc

It turns out the question revolving around "ordinary" as a 19th-century term for a place to buy regular meals, is even more complex and nuanced than I thought. The gist, as near I can make out, is that by 1840 or so, the word had fallen out of popular disuse in both England and America. It survived in literature, so that Americans thought it was still current, and used it, accordingly, to refer to England. At the same time, Dickens may have heard someone use it when he was touring America--someone who deliberately used it, perhaps, to sound British. So he mistakenly thought it was still being popularly used there.

The result was, that Dickens used it in a story about America; and Mathew used it twice to refer to England! But one of the instances in which Mathew used it in a reference to England, occurred in his original version of "A Christmas Carol," which accounts for Dickens not copying the word "ordinary" after the first two letters.

Dickens would not have started writing it in his own story about London, and then changed his mind. It's possible, of course, but unlikely, because the word had gone out of fashion 20 years earlier.

I'm sure that's clear as mud. What I can tell you, is that these things are often not so simple as "You're wrong, and it proves you don't know what you're talking about." There's a lot of wiggle room on some of these questions, but if you stick with it and are brutally honest--being ready to admit when you're wrong--you can get to the truth of the matter.

I hope you like the new video.

Sincerely,

Stephen Sakellarios, M.S.