Tuesday 10 May 2011

When is a volunteer not.....

What is a Volunteer'? I'd always thought it was someone who gives up some of their time to good causes instead of vegetating in front of the idiot box. Voluntary work is what I do on average for eight hours unpaid each week, sometimes as much as twelve or fourteen. For the accepted usage of the term, see the definition below, which is derived from several sources.
vol·un·teer   
[vol-uhn-teer]
–noun
  1. A person who voluntarily offers himself or herself for a service or undertaking.
  2. A person who performs a service willingly and without pay.
  3. Military . a person who enters the service voluntarily rather than through conscription or draft, especially for special or temporary service rather than as a member of the regular or permanent army.
Derivation;

obsolete French 'voluntaire' (now volontaire), from voluntaire, adjective, voluntary, from Old French, from Latin 'voluntarius' (Adjective; willing)
First Known Use: circa 1600
Now nowhere in that lot does the phrase "Made redundant then asked to come back by your ex-employers to do your old job for zip."

Someone needs to send the UK Cameroonies and their 'big society' a dictionary. Dozy lot.

2 comments:

Angry Exile said...

Someone needs to send the UK Cameroonies and their 'big society' a dictionary.

The number of people who need dictionary treatment - it involves being beaten around the head and neck with at least a concise edition or heavier - seems to be growing.

Bill Sticker said...

Re beating people with dictionaries; I was thinking more along the lines of the full Oxford English. The hard cover edition. All twenty volumes, plus the supplementary.

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