Looking for a quote from the Truth - Help?

[deworde]

It's about the type of person who uses IMHO, it's in The Truth, it's during one of the breakfast table scenes, and it's something to do with the kind of person who makes meetings last longer. Unfortunately my copy's not around, so I need research assistance.

Cheers for any help.

[Jason]

I think what you are looking for is this footnote:

[* The best way to describe Mr Windling would be like this: you are
at a meeting. You'd like to be away early. So would everyone else.
There really isn't very much to discuss, anyway. And just as
everyone can see Any Other Business coming over the horizon and is
already putting their papers neatly together, a voice says 'If I can
raise a minor matter, Mr Chairman . . .' and with a horrible wooden
feeling in your stomach you know, now, that the evening will go on
for twice as long with much referring back to the minutes of earlier
meetings. The man who has just said that, and is now sitting there
with a smug smile of dedication to the committee process, is as near
Mr Windling as makes no difference. And something that distinguishes
the Mr Windlings of the universe is the term 'in my humble opinion',
which they think adds weight to their statements rather than
indicating, in reality, 'these are the mean little views of someone
with the social grace of duckweed'.]

[Batty]

That is such a good description, by Terry. I wonder who he was thinking of when he wrote it?

Something I do not understand about the phrase 'IMHO', is why doesn't the person concerned just say 'In my opinion'?
Do the people who insert the word 'honest' have two opinions, an honest opinion (the truth), and a dishonest opinion?

[Dotsie]

It stands for humble (see Terry quote above) - as in, "my views might not mean much in the grand scheme of things, but here they are anyway". So false modesty really. Of course, Terry puts it much better than me

[Jan Van Quirm]

It's like in legal circles - the terms 'my learned friend' and 'with the greatest of respect' mean 'my idiot protagonist' and 'you've not earned mine actually'. Just make sure you never say it to the Judge!

When I do use textspeak (which is very seldom - c'mon you've seen my posts! ) I've tended to use the meaning 'honest' rather than humble - as if you're truly the latter you'd most likely never bother to speak of course? As for the other - honest is as honest does - these days I may talk a load of bollocks but I do mostly try to keep it sincere

Although funnily enough somebody said I was a humble person once - I've never been so insulted! But then Jesus said we'd inherit the earth so perhaps it's OK - oh bugger! That was the meek wasn't it? It's yet another example of sloppy 'parrot' insults, platitudes or simply more often 'nothing' language of the type of modern verbal garbage that sullies our language (well all of them I'm pretty sure) these days

[chris.ph]

welcome to the site deworde as you can see we are quite easily sidetracked

[Jan Van Quirm]

You're not wrong Chris but then that's one of the nicest things about this forum