Ken Blake
2024-12-01 07:31:25 UTC
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PermalinkU.S. envoy Amos Hochstein shuttled repeatedly to Beirut and Jerusalem
despite the ructions of an election at home to secure a deal that required
help from France, and that was nearly derailed by international arrest
warrants for Israel's leaders.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ructions
1: a noisy fight
2: DISTURBANCE, UPROAR
English offers up a scramble of colorful words for what can happen when
tempers spill over. For example, we have melee, fracas, donnybrook, ruckus,
and one especially for baseball fans, rhubarb. Ruction is rarer than most
of these.
Etymologists speculate that ruction came to English in the early 19th
century as a shortening and alteration of another word suggesting an
episode of violence: insurrection. The earliest uses of ruction
specifically make reference to the Irish Rebellion of 1798, an uprising
against British rule on that island. Ruckus came later, toward the end of
the 19th century, and was probably formed by combining ruction with rumpus.