"Postliterate man's electronic media contract the world to a village or tribe where everything happens to everyone at the same time: everyone knows about, and therefore participates in, everything that is happening the minute it happens. Television gives this quality of simultaneity to events in the global village." [Carpenter & McLuhan, "Explorations in Communication," 1960]"Thy sharpe and sulpherous bolt Splits the vn-wedgable and gnarled Oke." ["Measure for Measure," II.ii.116]OED calls it a variant of knurled, from M.E. knar "knot in wood" (late 14c.), originally "a rock, a stone;" of uncertain origin. "(Gnarled) occurs in one passage of Shakes. (for which the sole authority is the folio of 1623), whence it came into general use in the nineteenth century" [OED].