Page 23 marks a transition in chapter 2.
Pages 17 - 22 Bill haa been describing the problem.
On page 23 Bill begins to describe the solution to the problem.
Chapter 2 - page 23
plausibility, havoc
"Sometimes these excuses have a certain plausibility, but none of them really makes sense in the light of the havoc an
alcoholic's drinking bout creates."
1
Big Book - There Is A Solution - page 23
In this sentence plausibility functions as a noun. 2
Plausibility refers to the quality of being reasonable, believable, or having the appearance of truth.
Excuses that could almost be believed, but based on the resulting chaos they cannot be true. It refers to how excuses
for excessive drinking can seem reasonable on the surface, despite being illogical in the context of the damage it causes.
In a battle the word havoc was the command shouted to the winning army to begin collecting the spoils of their victory. It means to destroy, and devastate.
Definitions from Webster's 1930 edition. 3
image from wikimedia public domain
malady, baffled
"Once this malady has a real hold, they are a baffled lot."
1
Big Book - There Is A Solution - page 23
In this sentence malady functions as a noun. The word baffled functions as an adjective. 2
Once this illness takes hold we become confused, perplexed, or unable to understand why we continue these behaviors despite the negative consequences.
Definitions from Webster's 1930 edition. 3
|
on to page 24 |
|
back to page 22 |
|
jump to the top of this page |
Footnotes for page 23 - 29;
1Quotes from the Big Book on listed on this page are from the public domain version, in the United States, of the 2nd edition of the book Alcoholics Anonymous. Accessible at 12step.org
2Sentence diagramming, to determine the word usage within the sentence, was performed by CoreNLP at corenlp.run.
3Definitions used are from the Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language 1930 Edition. Access to this dictionary online is at Hathitrust.org