A knave, a rascal…
I got spam today defaming some German chap and his business. It sez: “Microsale SC KG, Ltd, Germany is a knave company and Uwe Schmidt is a big knave!”
Now it’s obviously pretty funny that someone these days would call someone a “knave”. The author of this sentence is apparently not a native English speaker – the archaic choice of vocabulary and the infelicitous (at best) use of “knave” as an attributive adjective in “knave company” (instead of the more natural “knavish”) are both giveaways.
I have various reasons for believing the author is German. Which makes this all the juicier a mistake, since in German “der Knabe” is “boy”, not “knave”. The author must have been proud of themself for their fine-tuned sense of vocabulary in knowing that English “knave” doesn’t mean “boy” (leastwise, not anymore it doesn’t). “‘Knave’ ist nicht “Knabe”! Das ist gut, ja, “knave” ist sehr gut, sehr Englisch. Der falsch Freund betr