Mea Culpa: Let the genie out of the lamp, not the bottle
Questions of style and usage in last week’s Independent
In an editorial last week we said that simply revoking Article 50 would leave unfinished Brexit business and commented: “The genie, so to speak, was let out of the bottle by David Cameron when he agreed to an in-out referendum in January 2013.”
I know there is a learned dispute about whether the oldest version of the story has a genie (or djinn) trapped in a bottle (or a jar), or a lamp. But the best known story in the English language is “Aladdin’s Wonderful Lamp”, from One Thousand and One Nights, first published in the early 18th century.
And I know that it is too late to fight back against the tide of popular usage, but I like pointless gestures and think it would be good to see “letting the genie out of the lamp” just once in a while.
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