GoldfishLord
Senior Member
- Joined
- Apr 18, 2016
- Member Type
- Student or Learner
- Native Language
- Korean
- Home Country
- South Korea
- Current Location
- South Korea
It seems to me that this diplomatic clan are actually pretty smart, or at least did very well on the verbal SAT's and went to elite schools where they learned to use words in precise, uncompromising ways, and sneer slightly at those who lacked this precision.
"Provisions" to the rest of us means "food", in certain expedition-like contexts, and this just shows what dumb bunnies we really are. The sense above is alive to the singular use of "provision" as something or a quantity of something provided. Your expedition could get a provision of three sides of bacon and a provision of five pounds of coffee, and together this bacon and this coffee would be your provisions (of food).
In the paragraph above, the US is making a provision of ATACMS missiles and perhaps a provision of artillery shells, and together these are the provisions of military hardware.
A provision would, in the first instance, be an act of providing, though it has been suffered to drift in meaning to the stuff provided, but not all the way to the vulgar "foodstuffs" sense of the commoners. So the hyper-elite just-so language using diplomats suffer a little drift just like the rest of us, but arrested in standardized ways.
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/EnglishLearning/s/TvATCbnSFY
(Note from mod: To save anyone else checking, the entire text above here is a direct copy of a single Reddit thread.)
1. Does "suffered" mean "allowed"?
2. Does "drift" mean "change"?
3. What does "suffer a little drift" mean?
4. What does "arrested" mean?
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