Mojo, The Bard, & Me

                   Alas, alas!

-Iago

                                   

Othello                                 Act IV, Scene i, Line 275

Not much to today’s line, is there? Just for the heck of it, I looked up ‘alas’. It’s not in the Shakespeare glossary at all. I guess we’re supposed to know what it means. In the online MW it’s listed as an expression of grief, pity, or concern. So it’s pretty much a catch all response to something that’s kind of bad.

            ‘My dog died.’

            ‘Alas!’

            ‘I lost my job.’

            ‘Alas.’

So basically it’s got thousands of uses. And if you tend to talk about what’s going on in the country these days you can pretty much use this word non-stop.

Alas.

Alas? Yeah, I'm not sure if this is really an 'alas' moment. More like, 'Oh crap!'