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Mea Culpa: Let the genie out of the lamp, not the bottle

Questions of style and usage in last week’s Independent

John Rentoul
Friday 13 September 2019 18:58 BST
Comments
Rubbed up the wrong way: when in doubt, defer to ‘One Thousand and One Nights’
Rubbed up the wrong way: when in doubt, defer to ‘One Thousand and One Nights’

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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