The Daily Telegraph crossword clue ran as follows: “Persistently demanding various permutation (11)”. Now the younger brother would simply snort that Telegraph crosswords are too damned easy and if you cannot figure out the answer (importunate) in less than ten seconds you must be really stupid.
The trouble is that “importunate” is not one of the words I have used in the past twelve months, not in conversation, not in my blog-writing, nor anywhere else. If someone had told me yesterday to “stop being so importunate…” I’m not sure if I would have treated the remark as an insult or a compliment. I hereby resolve to make “importunate” one of my words of 2006.
Obviously the word means persistently demanding, and when I come to think about it I have read William Morris’s The Earthly Paradise:
Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time,
Why should I strive to set the crooked straight?
Let it suffice that my murmuring rhyme
Beats with light wing against the ivory gate,
Telling a tale not too importunate
To those who in the sleepy region stay,
Lulled by the singer of an empty day.
A little google-tapping reveals a splendid painting by William Holman Hunt called “The Importunate Neighbour” (1895 and property of National Gallery of Victoria) showing the said neighbour beating endlessly on a door. There is also a nice quote in one dictionary definition ‘the appealing and frightened look worn by an injured dog; she holds out her hand for money, importunate, insistent; a pleading note in her voice’.
I’m sure that I can tell the credit control departments of one or two of my suppliers to “stop being so importunate…”. Inland Revenue might also get hit with the word. But I’ll be careful using the word around members of my family. They may have read this blog and know what the word means.
