Negative Space: archaeology

I ask the reader to remember that I am talking of words, not as they are used in talk or novels, but as they will be used, and have been used, in warrants and certificates, and Acts of Parliament… The difference is that a novelist or a talker can be trusted to try and hit the mark; it is all to his glory that the cap should fit, that the type should be recognised; that he should, in a literary sense, hang the right man. But it is by no means always to the interests of governments or officials to hang the right man. The fact they they often do stretch words in order to cover cases is the whole foundation of having any fixed laws or free institutions at all. — G. K. Chesterton (Eugenics and Other Evils)