haunts

[vil]

Dear teachers,

I have just read the Longfellow’s “The song of Hiawatha” where I noted a rarely used in colloquial English word namely the noun “haunt”.

“Ye who love the haunts of nature,
Love the sunshine of the meadow,
Love the shadow of the forest,
Love the wind among the branches,
And the rain-shower and the snow-storm,
And the rushing of great rivers
Though their palisades of pine-trees,
And the thunder in the mountains,
Whose innumerable echoes
Flap like eagles in their eyries;-
Listen to these wild traditions,
To this song of Hiawatha!”

I know, the noun means a place frequently visited. The verb was generally used when speaking of ghosts that were believed to visit a definite place: such places were said to be haunted. In the first lines of The Manifesto of the Communist Party this verb is used in connection with the metaphor spectre: A spectre is haunting Europe- the spectre of Communism. The noun is of literary character and therefore rather rarely used in English language.

In the meantimeI read thearticle “Depleted uranium still haunts Balkans” by Alex Kirby (an BBC News Online environment correspondent) where I saw the sentence “Depleted uranium (DU) ammunition used by Nato in the mid-1990s in Bosnia-Herzegovina is still polluting air and water there, the UN reports”.

Would you be kind enough to tell me whether the author has used of the proper source concerning the adequate verb in the present case? If I give rein to my thoughts I could presuppose that a new spectre is haunting Europe nowadays.

Regards

V

[Anglika]

In this context it is a noun and has the meaning of a place that is often visited.

That street is the haunt of our local hoodies.

Wasn't that pub one of your haunts when you lived here?