! A Little Grammar Is Most Becoming, It Becomes A Man...

And in case no-one mentioned this to you on those hot summer afternoons when you could hear the sound of bat on ball, or ball on racquet, or foot on football, or just people enjoying themselves out there beyond the half-open classroom window – a little bit of grammar can open your eyes, open your mind, make you curious… take for example the word ‘become’.. many centuries ago the ancient Brits got it from some ‘Germanic’ tribe, and it meant, to come to a place, be somewhere, go somewhere… and later it acquired the sense of something developing into something else, and being recognised as that – ‘she’s become a real beauty, hasn’t she? ’ then in the Jane Austeny 18th century years, they would say ‘what a very becoming young lady..’ though not to imply she wasn’t quite a lady yet, oh no… and the verb had ‘become’ an adjective sometimes (well, OK, a verbal adjective..) or they’d say ‘How well those clothes become her! ’ meaning, not, she hung them up at night, and in the morning found herself hanging there inside them… but meaning decorous, well turned out… then in the 19th century I guess, philosophers of the heavy sort (we might assume they’d reverted to Germanic tones…) talked about ‘Being and Becoming’, implying that two things were going on, a bit like one thing standing still inside something else which was changing; or perhaps outside; a bit like God (whom those philosophers didn’t necessarily believe in – but it serves…) God saying ‘I Am - BUT – I am going to become – Everything! ! … so, Let There Be Light! ’ and you know what – there was light… and there alas, we must leave our friend ‘becoming’; to become what it will, or rather, how we use it; but you must agree, life becomes more interesting, even you could say, more becoming, with a touch of grammar even on a hot day when you’re becoming a little drowsy, please Miss, can I go and get a glass of water…?