Scholarly Gentlemen

"You are a Gentleman and a Scholar". This is perhaps one of the most insulting compliments I think anyone can ever receive in his or her respective life. It is beyond distasteful, and offers a certain sense of mockery to the receiver. This statement almost defines what it means to insult a fellow human being, and it does so quite bluntly. You, dear reader, no doubt find my thesis repulsive, but that is simply because I have yet to enlighten you.

It is a simple matter of breaking down the sentence and words, really. When one first lays eyes upon this sentence, they are presented with two nouns, a pronoun, and four conjunctions. Conjunctions add nothing to the heart and soul of the sentence so they're out. We are now left with, "You gentleman scholar". If said fast enough and with deep enough inflection, our sentence actually sounds like someone is being called an article of clothing by a caveman.

But that is completely irrelevant.

Let us turn our focus to the nouns. We are not eliminating the pronoun, but are rather repulsed by its presence for the time being. The nouns are, 'gentleman' and, 'scholar'. You may believe I am about to give the definition of these words, but I am not, because not only would that be pathetically predictable, but also because the definition of a word--especially these words--is not always in alignment with things people associate with said word.

But I digress.

When one thinks of a gentleman, one will generally either picture a primp and oldish gentleman sporting a tuxedo and sipping a glass of champagne, or a man of any age smiling politely and holding the door for a woman. The former of these is likely much more frowned upon than the latter, and so we will assume the latter for the sake of the argument.

There is, of course, nothing insulting about calling someone that sort of gentleman. On the contrary, it is almost delightful to receive such a compliment! Now imagine someone walking up to this perfectly nice man and telling him that they believe he is dumb enough to spend the better part of ten years attending countless classes and reading countless books at an abhorring high price, then spend the rest of his life looking for a satisfying job so as to pay off the schools which sucked his creative brain--and wallet--dry.

And that, dear reader, is why you should only ever call a man a gentleman, and nothing more.