What ‘especially’ means

THE EDITOR: I am not a highly literate person, Madam Editor, but I remember reading somewhere that Shakespeare did a whole piece on the word ‘if’ and concluded “much virtue in ‘if.’

People take so many of these simple monosyllable words for granted. We look up and know the meanings of so many of these big words but what about simple words like ‘then’ and ‘when?’ Take a very simple everyday word like ‘especially.’ I looked it up in  Funk and Wagnalls and it says it means particularly. Definitely not only! That’s why I was so surprised at the hullabaloo (or as some said “the furore”) that broke out recently when the word ‘especially’ was included in a budget document in the phrase “especially Afro-Trinidad males.”

Review all the critical comments, Madam Editor, and you are certain to conclude like me that it is almost as if the document said ‘only.’ Perhaps those people had an agenda, so they wanted to raise the political temperature. So I looked up ‘only.’ Funk and Wagnalls tells me ‘only’ means solely; without another or others; singly; exclusively; limiting a statement to a single defined person, thing or number. Is that what ‘especially’ means in the phrase, Madam Editor?

ALFRED COLE
Barataria