“Conservative for Moderate. ‘A conservative estimate’; ‘a conservative forecast’; ‘a conservative statement,’ and so on. These and many other abuses of the word are of recent growth in the newspapers and ‘halls of legislation.’ Having been found to have several meanings, conservative seems to be thought to mean everything.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.
“Who is the title character in James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans (1826)? Uncas, the son of Chingachgook. He is killed defending Cora, his love, against Magua.”
Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
“hermeneutics: Movement in the philosophy of science, according to which the task of the human sciences is to elucidate the structure of the social institutions underlying behavior. Thus the aim of linguistics, as one human (and therefore ‘hermeneutic’) science, is to elucidate the rules of language, seen as rules that constitute such an institution.”
Excerpted from: Matthews, P.H., ed. The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.
“Gerund: The -ing (form of a verb that functions as a noun: Hiking is good exercise. She was praised for her playing.”
Excerpted from: Strunk, William Jr., and E.B. White. The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition. New York: Longman, 2000.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
“Benchley was known for carrying on a constant war with machines and inanimate objects, always coming out the loser. Once he wrote, ‘The hundred and one little bits of wood and metal that go to make up the impedimenta of daily life…each and every one are bent on my humiliation and working together, as on one great team, to bedevil and confuse me and to get me into a neurasthenic’s home before I am sixty. I can’t fight these boys. They’ve got me licked.’”
Excerpted from: Drennan, Robert E., ed. The Algonquin Wits. New York: Kensington, 1985.
Posted in English Language Arts, New York City, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged humor, literary oddities
“Roman Classicism: An American manifestation of English Georgian architecture, favored especially by Thomas Jefferson and seen ca. 1790 to 1830. A raised first floor, a Roman-style columned portico raised on a podium, and severity of ornament characterize the style.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged humor, literary oddities
“Zeitgeist: (Ger., spirit of the time) In art terms, refers to certain elements characterizing the mood, thinking, and resulting art production or a period or moment.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
“Direct Object: A noun or pronoun that receives the action of a transitive verb. Pearson publishes books.”
Excerpted from: Strunk, William Jr., and E.B. White. The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition. New York: Longman, 2000.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
“Double bind: An inescapable dilemma involving conflicting demands that allow no right or satisfactory response. An influential theory of the etiology of schizophrenia was put forward by the English-born US anthropologist Gregory Bateson (1904-1980) and several co-authors in an article in the journal Behavioral Science in 1956, according to which schizophrenia is caused by parenting styles that create double binds for children, as when a mother complains to her son for not giving her a kiss but recoils physically whenever the child does kiss her. This theory was enthusiastically adopted by the Scottish psychiatrist Ronald D(avid) Laing (1927-89) and others during the 1970s and 1980s, but empirical evidence has not been forthcoming in support of the theory, despite its attractiveness.”
Excerpted from: Colman, Andrew M., ed. Oxford Dictionary of Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
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