The common Latin verb legere has an astonishing range of meaning: to pick up, to read, to overhear, to track someone's footsteps. When negated, this verb develops into the modern English "neglect" as well as related words like "negligent" and "negligence." In today's episode, we also consider the stylistic principle of "diligent negligence" (or perhaps "careful nonchalance") from the Roman statesman Cicero and its afterlife in Raymond Chandler, the master of hard-boiled crime fiction.

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Music: Adapted from Sonatine by Maurice Ravel, performed by Irene Posviatovska (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

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