Googling "baton rompu" gives some consensus. Eg Je dirais qu'une conversation à bâtons rompus est une conversation qui n'est pas préparée, qui part un peu dans tous les sens... ''A bâtons rompus'' désigne une conversationplutot désorganisée. Alors qu'en Afrique, une technique consistait à faire tourner un bâton (le bâton à palabres), le détenteur étant seul habilité à parler. Le bâton rompu laisse chacun libre de parler comme bon lui semble Such a conversation could also be friendly and warm. I don't think we need to infer some different meaning... On 13 Feb 2010, at 21:49, jim stasheff wrote:
Ronnie Brown wrote:
Dear All,
In view of a letter written by Alexander Grothendieck on January 3, 2010, giving a kind of interdiction on further publication of any of his writings or correspondence, in any form, I would like to make the following clear.
I started corresponding with Alexander in 1982; this turned into a friendly and warm correspondence, which he later termed `a baton rompu', There's a totally different meaning for baton rompu I wonder which came first and how the tranmogrificatio occurred
jim
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