“Realism: Fidelity to natural appearances without slavish attention to minute details (see Naturalism). As a movement, it goes back to Courbet and Manet in the 1850s and culminates in Impressionism.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
“socioeconomic status: A term used to describe the home backgrounds of individuals or groups, taking into account such elements as family income and education attainment.”
Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.
“Diminutive (noun): A word or word element indicating (often by addition of a suffix) small size or familiarly lovable, pitiable, or dismissible qualities, sometimes condescendingly. Adverb: diminutively.
‘My grandmother, too, used to put other people’s ailments into the diminutive; strokelets were what her friends had. Aldo said he was bored to tearsies by my grandmother’s diminutives.’ Renata Adler, Speedboat“
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
“Directly for Immediately. ‘I will come directly’ means that I will come by the most direct route.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.
“diamond: [ME] The name of the gem derives from a medieval Latin alteration of Latin adamans ADAMANT. Adamant was a legendary rock or mineral of many supposed properties. One of these was hardness, which was a reason why people sometimes identified it with diamond. A diamond is forever was used as an advertising slogan for De Beers Consolidated Mines from the late 1940s onwards, and in 1956 Ian Fleming used Diamonds are Forever as the title of his latest James Bond thriller, but the idea was first expressed by the American writer Anita Loos, in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925). ‘Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend‘ was a song written by Leo Robin and Jule Styne for the 1949 stage musical of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.”
Excerpted from: Creswell, Julia. Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
“adamant: [OE] The Greek word adamas, originally meaning “invincible or untameable,” came to be applied to the hardest metal of stone and to diamond, the hardest naturally occurring substance. Via Latin it was the source not only of adamant but also of DIAMOND. In Old English adamant was the name given to a legendary rock so hard that is was believed to be impenetrable. Early medieval Latin writers mistakenly explained the word as coming from adamare ‘take a liking to’ and associated adamant with the lodestone or magnet which ‘takes a liking’ to iron, and the word passed into modern languages with this confusion of meaning. The modern use, with its notion of unyielding conviction, is much more recent, probably dating from the 1930s.”
Excerpted from: Creswell, Julia. Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
“Auctioneer, n. The man who proclaims with a hammer that he has picked a pocket with his tongue.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. David E. Schultz and S.J. Joshi, eds. The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2000.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes
Tagged fiction/literature, humor, literary oddities, united states history
“Didactic (adjective): Demonstrating intend to teach or edify; purposively instructive or informative; excessively earnest or pedantic, especially in a narrow, self-righteous way; moralistic. Adverb: didactically; noun: didact, didacticism, didactics.
‘One is literally fabulous. The other makes use of a dry, rather didactic style in which the detail is as precisely observed as if the author were writing a manual for the construction of a solar heating unit.’ Gore Vidal, Matters of Fact and Fiction”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
“circular flow of income: The reciprocal flow of income between consumers and producers: consumers earn income from employment and profit, and spend this income on the products of firms. If there were neither injections of new purchasing power into this flow nor leakages out of it, total income in each period would be equal to the spending arising from incomes in the period, and total income would remain constant over time. Injections of new purchasing power not derived from income can be made by investment, government spending, or exports. Leakages from the circular flow are caused by saving, tax payments, or imports. If injections and leakages are equal, incomes will be constant; if injections exceed leakages, incomes rise over time; and if leakages exceed injections, incomes fall.”
Excerpted from: Black, John, Nigar Hashimzade, and Gareth Miles. Oxford Dictionary of Economics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Posted in Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
“Journalism is the ability to meet the challenge of filling space.”
Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Portable Curmudgeon. New York: Plume, 1992.
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