Au contraire my friend Terrell, Lewis did but purloin after perusing
Aristotle's "Interpretation," so that the term is much, much older than you
surmise,
with or without your hallucinogenic crutch:
As there are in the mind thoughts which do not involve truth or falsity,
and
also those which must be either true or false, so it is in speech. For
truth
and falsity imply combination and separation. Nouns and verbs, provided
nothing is added, are like thoughts without combination or separation;
'man' and
'white', as isolated terms, are not yet either true or false. In proof of
this, consider the word 'goat-stag.' It has significance, but there is no
truth
or falsity about it, unless 'is' or 'is not' is added, either in the
present
or in some other tense. Likewise the word 'bitch-slap', often used by those
swarthy Estruscan sailors who claim to have first discovered syphilis. It
is
simple combination and separation, this light of truth and shade of
falsity.
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