“Archaism (noun): Antiquated expression, diction, or style; out-of-date or old-fashioned word or phrase, often having some currency or literary usefulness, e.g., “perchance,” “forsooth,” “betwixt.” Adj. archaism; v. archaize.
‘A part of our reality is the unreality of archaic language about sex.’ Dwight Bolinger, Language—The Loaded Weapon”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
I don’t know how often it is used these days, but if you have an idea that your students should know it and understand how to use it, here is a context clues worksheet on the adjective slipshod. It means, for the purposes of this document, “shabby,” “careless,” and “slovenly.”
Its primary meaning, as it sounds and dating from 1580, is “wearing loose shoes or slippers.” But it also means “down at the heel.” All of this is to say that this was almost certainly a Word of the Day at Merriam Webster at the height of the first pandemic surge in the late winter and early spring of 2020.
Wait: has this really continued for almost two years now?
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.
“It takes no great perspicacity to detect and to complain of the standardization in American life. So many foreign and domestic commentators have pointed this feature out in exactly the same terms that the comment has become standardized and could be turned out on little greeting cards, all from the same type-form: ‘American life has become too standardized.’”
Excerpted from: Drennan, Robert E., ed. The Algonquin Wits. New York: Kensington, 1985.
Posted in English Language Arts, New York City, Quotes, Reference
Tagged fiction/literature, humor, literary oddities
Here is a learning support on comma placement relative to other punctuation. This is the fourteenth of fifteenth learning supports, presented seriatim as they were presented in the punctuation manual from which they were excerpted. (You can find an excursus on this choice of publishing practice here.)
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.
“Every Good Boy Deserves Favor: A play (1977) by the Czech-born British dramatist Tom Stoppard (b. 1937), with music by the US conductor Andre Previn. The play is about a dissident confined to a Soviet psychiatric hospital, and the ironic title refers to the mnemonic used in music teaching for the notes on the lines of the treble stave: E, G, B, D, F.”
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged drama/theater, music, readings/research
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the idiom “tip of the iceberg.” This metaphor remains in sufficiently common use, I think, that students, especially students for whom English is a second language, might want to learn it at some point. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of two compound sentences and three comprehension questions. With characteristic brevity, the authors of the passaage (i.e., the authors and editors of the The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy) convey that this idiom indicates “Only a hint or suggestion of a much larger or more complex issue or problem.”
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.
“A posteriori: From what comes after: proceeding from effect back to cause, or reasoning form given facts to principles; pertaining to what can be known only through experience or facts; inductive or empirical (contrasted with a priori).”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
To finish up for today, here is a learning support on using a comma with specific words or terms. This is the thirteenth of fifteen such posts. (You can find an excursus on this choice of publishing practice here.)
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.
“Facts: Tools of authority.
Facts are supposed to make truth out of a proposition. There are the proof. The trouble is that there are enough facts around to prove most things. They have become the comfort and prop of conventional wisdom; the music of the rational technocracy; the justification for any sort of policy, particularly as advanced by special interest groups, expert guilds and other modern corporations. Confused armies of contradictory facts struggle in growing darkness. Support ideological fantasies, Staff bureaucratic briefing books.
It was Giambattista Vico who first identified this problem. He argued that any obsession with proof would misfire unless it was examined in a far larger context which took into account experience and the surrounding circumstances. Diderot was just as careful when he wrote the entry on facts for the Encyclopedie:
You can divide facts into three types: the divine, the natural, and man-made. The first belongs to theology; the second to philosophy and the third to history. All are equally open to question.
There is little room for such care in a corporatist society. Facts are the currency of power for each specialized group. But how can so much be expected from these ignorant fragments of knowledge? They are not able to think and so cannot be used to replace thought. They have no memory. No imagination, No judgement. They’re really not much more than interesting landmarks which may illuminate our way as we attempt to think. If properly respected they are never truth, always illustration.”
Excerpted from: Saul, John Ralston. The Doubter’s Companion. New York: The Free Press, 1994.
Here is a reading on skepticism along with its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. This reading’s brevity should not distract from the fact (ironic, I know, to use that noun in a post containing a reading about skepticism) that it is a good general introduction to the topic of skepticism and its intellectual and philosophical principles.
And editorially, if I may? I cannot imagine a better time to teach this important mode of thought and analysis to students. In an age where social media has made it possible to spread mendacity and utter nonsense around the world with the stroke of a key, we owe it to students, and to civil society, to put this concept and its tools in the public square.
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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