I was out driving somewhere yesterday, radio tuned to an NPR news show, when the host said the current situation was "intolerable," whereupon the interviewee asserted it was worse than that: "The situation has been intolerable for the last 20 years," she said. I wonder for how long the intolerable can persist before it arrives at one of Jane Austen's favorite adjectives, "tolerable," as in:
The suitor had a tolerable income.
Thirty years? Samuel Beckett, Jane's colleague on the Humanities syllabus, would probably say 70 or 80, to coincide with life expectancy.
ESTRAGON: I can't go on like this.
VLADIMIR: That's what you think.
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