Attempts to resolve the Quandary:
3
The inveterate putative optative supposedly uttered by Marie Antoinette, “Let them eat cake”, has recently come under question by exponents of a questionable new age historian Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve who believes she actually said “Let them masticate muffins”, which makes even less sense in French. (by gumo420)
2
“May we chew and chew and chew and chew...” is the optative polysyndeton by which Hans, a rabid exponent of the macrobiotic practice of prolonged mastication, putative pathway to bliss, commences each meal. (by Rudi)
1
On this particular warm afternoon in late June, while elderly Miss Foote was giving the drowsy fifth grade class their Friday afternoon grammar lesson, even those in the front row, propping their drooping eyelids up with both hands, couldn't make sense of the complicated diagram on the blackboard, which seemed to be labeled "Putative Exponent of the Masticatory Optative" and to refer, in some fashion they failed utterly to grasp, to Miss Foote herself and her longing to get home and have some fresh caramel cake with her iced coffee. (by cusheamus)
4
Had we but world enough, and time, we might employ the optative more knowingly, while resigning ourselves to the awful truth that, albeit putative exponents of omnivorous, chronic verbal mastication, we still cannot digest everything.
(by Et Seqq)