Well, damn

[desperance]

History can be very disappointing. The term "vexillologist" was not coined until 1957, which rather militates against its use in a story about nineteenth-century flagwaving. Tho' I suppose one proto-vexillologist could coin it in the fiction, and another could laugh him out of the idea, for it is a very stupid word (and does that hybrid thing of mixing Greek and Latin roots, which the purists amongst us* have been known to frown upon).


*including, obviously, me