Monthly Archives: December 2021

W. Somerset Maugham on Principles

Posted on December 27, 2021 | Leave a comment

“You can’t learn too soon that the the most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.”

W. Somerset Maugham

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Portable Curmudgeon. New York: Plume, 1992.

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Common Errors in English Usage: Humanism (n), Humanist (n/adj)

Posted on December 27, 2021 | Leave a comment

OK, last but not least today, here is a worksheet on using humanism and humanist adapted from the pages of Paul Brians’ book Common Errors in English Usage (to which he allows free access at his Washington State University website). This is a full-page worksheet with a three-sentence reading and ten modified cloze exercises. Professor Brians nicely explains the caution one should use when using these words (e.g., they are not synonymous atheism and atheist). The worksheet is a simple usage exercise, with the context of the cloze exercises indicating which noun to use, or if the adjective humanist is called for by the sentence.

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

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Humanities

Posted on December 27, 2021 | Leave a comment

“Humanities: A term generally used in Europe and America for literature, languages, philosophy, art, history, theology, music, as opposed to the natural sciences and the social sciences. See HUMANISM.”

Excerpted from: Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. New York: Penguin, 1992.

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Word Root Exercise: Ject

Posted on December 27, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a worksheet on the Latin word root ject. It means, simply, “to throw.” This is an extremely productive root in English, found in high-frequency words like eject, inject, reject, projectile, and trajectory.

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

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Compendium

Posted on December 27, 2021 | Leave a comment

“Compendium (noun): A resume of written work, text, or area of inquiry; brief but comprehensive summary; collection or inventory. Adjective: compendious; Adverb: compendiously; Noun: compendiousness.

‘We—whoever “we” are—might define the compulsion as a pleasurable urge to express through verbal imagery a compendium of certain inexplicably correlated vagaries observed by him in mental patients, on an off, since his first hear at Chose.’ Vladimir Nabokov, Ada”

Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.

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Cultural Literacy: Operating System

Posted on December 27, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the operating system found in the computer you are using. This is a half-page worksheet with a two-sentence reading and two comprehension questions. In other words, just the basics on this aspect of computer technology, and only the most general of introductions.

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

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Neologism

Posted on December 27, 2021 | Leave a comment

“Neologism: A new word or sense of a word and the coining or use of new words and sense. Most neologisms in English belong in the following categories; (1) Compounding: couch potato, someone constantly slumped on a couch watching television: video-conferencing, a number of people taking part in a conference or conferences by means of video equipment rather than all meeting on one place. (2) Derivation: yuppie, formed from yup, the initial letters of the phrase ‘young urban professional’ by adding the suffix –ie; yuppiedom, the condition of being a yuppie, formed from yuppie by adding the further suffix -dom. (3) Shifting meaning: spin, a journalist’s term for a special bias or slant given to a piece of writing. (4) Extension in grammatical function: the nouns guest and host used as verbs. (5) Abbreviation: in Stock Exchange usage, arb from arbitrager or arbitrageur, one who sells securities or commodities simultaneously in different markets to benefit from unequal prices; the computer acronym GIGO, meaning garbage in, garbage out. (6) Back-Formation: disinform formed from disinformation (and not the reverse). (7) Blending: harmolodic mixing harmony and melodic. (8) Borrowing: loanwords such as glasnost from Russian; Calques or Loan Translations such found object from the French objet trouve. (9) Very rarely, Root-Creation, or Coinage from sounds with no previous known meaning whatever: googol, Kodak (both apparently formed ex nihilo.”

Excerpted from: McArthur, Tom. The Oxford Concise Companion to the English Language. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

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Fascism (n)

Posted on December 27, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a context clues worksheet on the noun fascism. I can’t pretend that this five-sentence will do much more than assist students in inferring the most basic meaning of this complex political term of art. It might, therefore, be either a good place to start or a good refresher. But it you want students to understand fascism thoroughly, not a bad idea at the moment, this worksheet will only introduce the word itself and its basic dimensions of authoritarianism.

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

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Zoomorphic Element

Posted on December 27, 2021 | Leave a comment

“Zoomorphic Element: Ornament based on animal forms.”

Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.

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John J. Audubon

Posted on December 27, 2021 | Leave a comment

If you can use it, and I say that with the confidence of experience, because the study of John J. Audubon at the primary and secondary secondary levels of education isn’t much done, here is a reading on John J. Audubon along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. As with most readings from the Intellectual Devotional series, this one-page text does an excellent job of encapsulating a complex life, particularly Audubon’s, uh, unorthodox working methods. What is doesn’t report, which I learned in the process of preparing this post, is that Audubon was a slaveholder.

So, what a bitter irony that he is buried in Harlem.

This post would not be complete without mentioning Audubon’s achievements, particularly his majestic and magisterial Birds of America, the double elephant folio he produced, and which is now a high spot in American antiquarian book collecting. Most copies–there are 120 known in all–of the book are in the possession of research libraries around the United States–the Beinecke Library at Yale keeps its copy (like its copy of the Gutenberg Bible, which came out of the Melk Abbey) out for display in its main gallery. When I followed various of the great research libraries on Twitter e.g. The Huntington Library, the Lilly Library, The Newberry Library, and, again, the Beinecke at Yale, a couple of them filmed and posted the turning of pages of Birds of America, a ritual worth watching.

If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

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