A few days ago, while strolling through the virtual agora of our age, I heard Rory Sutherland say badinage. Thanks to the way the Dean of Marketing Mavens used the word, I suspected that it meant something like ‘small talk’. However, lest I fall prey to my own presumption, I decided to seek other examples of the employment of that obvious borrowing from the language of Molière. To this end, I resorted to the most elephantine of all query engines, the advanced search page made available by the good people of the Hathi Trust.
My little expedition into the mother lode of searchable volumes turned up six instances in which Philip Dormer Stanhope, known the world of (pun intended) letters as the 4th Earl of Chesterfield, used badinage. Four of these appeared in missives that the celebrated correspondent wrote to his natural son, Philip Stanhope. The fifth was found in a message that His Lordship composed for his godson (who, marvelous to say, was also called Philip Stanhope). The last piece of mail was a note that Chesterfield sent to a colleague who, I am happy to say, bore a name other than Philip Stanhope.
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