So how fast is deliberately, anyway?
The news the other week was significant: A federal appeals court struck down Utah鈥檚 ban on same-sex marriage.
As explained it: 鈥淎 federal appeals court ... for the first time employed a landmark Supreme Court decision to declare that the fundamental right to marriage must be extended to gay couples, adding momentum to a remarkably rapid recognition of same-sex marriage by judges nationwide.鈥澛�
But as I listened to a public radio discussion of the decision while pouring my morning coffee in the kitchen, one word in particular caught my attention, even though it was something of a throwaway line from one of the talking heads.
We have been here before, I thought.聽
The word was deliberate. As in 鈥渁ll deliberate speed.鈥�
鈥淎ll deliberate speed鈥�: History-conscious readers will recognize this as a phrase used in the Supreme Court鈥檚 decision in Brown v. Board of Education.
A website explains, 鈥淭he Brown decision declared the system of legal segregation unconstitutional. But the Court ordered only that the states end segregation with 鈥榓ll deliberate speed.鈥� This vagueness about how to enforce the ruling gave segregationists the opportunity to organize resistance.鈥澛�
So what鈥檚 the story on deliberate? And is 鈥渄eliberate speed鈥� slow or fast? Deliberate looks as though it should mean the opposite of liberate, meaning to free, as in 鈥渢he liberation of Paris.鈥澛�
But no, the Latin to look for there is 鈥渓ibra,鈥� the balance or scale. To deliberate is to weigh something in the balance. A jury 鈥渄eliberates.鈥� (The Oxford English Dictionary offers up a more concise earlier form, deliber, but it, alas, has gone obsolete.)
As an adjective, deliberate means intentional. A quick check of international headlines suggests that 鈥渄eliberate murder鈥� is a legal term in many jurisdictions for what Americans call 鈥渇irst-degree murder.鈥�
The adverb deliberately was one of the first polysyllables we mastered as children. We used it often in appealing to the High Court of Mommy and Daddy: 鈥淗e did that deliberately!鈥澛�
Delivered with tearful intensity, that term was used to suggest conscious intent (鈥淗e kicked me!鈥�) distinct from the accidental rough-and-tumble of kids rattling around unrestrained in the back seat, as we did in the days before children traveled everywhere strapped in like tiny test pilots.
鈥淒eliberate speed鈥� signals clear intent and resolution, but also a lack of haste.聽
That makes the phrase not quite a classic 鈥淛anus word,鈥� one whose two meanings are directly opposite (sanction, for instance, meaning both to punish and to privilege).
Instead, 鈥渄eliberate speed鈥� can swing both ways from the middle 鈥� in rather the same way that 鈥溾�� means one thing on one side of the Atlantic and another thing on the other.聽
But on the gay marriage issue, 鈥渁ll deliberate speed鈥� is turning out to be pretty swift.
