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learner1
Joined: 10 Mar 2007
Posts: 333
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 Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 10:09 am Post subject: poach |
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Hello,
She hated the woman who poached her husband.
What does 'poached' mean in the sentence? Is it another way of saying 'took'?
Thank you very much for your reply. |
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dragn
Joined: 17 Feb 2009
Posts: 450
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| Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 10:26 am Post subject: |
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Hi,
| Quote: |
She hated the woman who poached her husband.
What does 'poached' mean in the sentence? Is it another way of saying 'took'? |
Took? Oh yeah. Big time. 
If you poach animals, you hunt them illegally and probably in an area where you're not allowed to be. Here, it is being used a little more figuratively. And effectively, I might add.
Greg |
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learner1
Joined: 10 Mar 2007
Posts: 333
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| Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 10:58 am Post subject: |
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| dragn wrote: |
| And effectively |
Hello dragn,
Thank you very much for your reply and what do you mean here? |
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dragn
Joined: 17 Feb 2009
Posts: 450
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| Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 7:51 pm Post subject: |
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When I say she used the word poach effectively, I mean she colored her sentence with shades of meaning and subtle connotations that she couldn't have with almost any other word. By simply choosing the word poach, she paints a vivid mental picture of the other woman stalking her prey, like a hunter; creeping stealthily into her prey's natural habitat; carefully setting a trap and waiting for the precise moment to spring that trap and successfully snaring her illegal catch; marching triumphantly back to camp with the hapless beast roped and tied.
Now, if she had just said the woman took her husband...*poof*...it's all gone. All the vivid imagery and shades of meaning are absent, and we have a limp, boring sentence that merely conveys the essential facts. It's about as expressive and engaging as the mathematical formula for the circumference of a circle. 
Welcome to the world of good writing. Here, being grammatically correct is not the goal; it's the beginning.
"If you can say a thing with one stroke, unanswerably you have style." -- George Bernard Shaw
Greg |
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learner1
Joined: 10 Mar 2007
Posts: 333
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| Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2009 11:41 am Post subject: |
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Hello dragn,
It took me longer time to read your post because there were a lot of words in it I didn't know and had to consulted the dictionary! Thank you very much for your detailed explanation about 'poach'. |
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learner1
Joined: 10 Mar 2007
Posts: 333
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| Posted: Sat Apr 04, 2009 1:05 pm Post subject: |
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Hello dragn,
What's the subtle difference between #1 and #2?
1.She hated the woman who poached her husband.
2.She hated the woman who stole her husband from her.
Thank you very much for your reply. |
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dragn
Joined: 17 Feb 2009
Posts: 450
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| Posted: Sat Apr 04, 2009 10:47 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
1.She hated the woman who poached her husband.
2.She hated the woman who stole her husband from her. |
They're both actually pretty good sentences. I've already commented on poached, so I'll focus on stole.
Stole is also good here because it emphasizes the idea that the other woman took something that was not hers; it conveys the sense that the other woman is morally corrupt. After all, morally upright people don't steal things, do they? And thieves deserve nothing but contempt, don't they? Indeed, and so stole speaks volumes about the nature of what she did and her character, as well as how the speaker feels toward her. She feels that she's been violated. She feels that she's been robbed of something valuable by a dirty, rotten, no-good thief.
Hope this helps.
Greg |
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learner1
Joined: 10 Mar 2007
Posts: 333
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| Posted: Sun Apr 05, 2009 1:16 pm Post subject: |
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| Thank you very much for your great comment about 'stole' here, dragn. |
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