“Usage: The way in which the elements of language are customarily used to produce meaning, including accent, pronunciation, words, and idioms. The term occurs neutrally in formal usage, disputed usage, and local usage, and it has strong judgmental and prescriptive connotations in bad usage, correct usage, usage and abusage, and usage controversies.”
Excerpted from: McArthur, Tom. The Oxford Concise Companion to the English Language. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
“”Kubla Khan: A famously unfinished, opium-induced poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), who had claimed to have written down as much as he could of what he had just been dreaming before being interrupted by the arrival of ‘a person on business from Porlock.’ Composed while Coleridge was living in Somerset in 1797-8, the poem was first published in Christabel and Other Poems (1816). It bears little relation to the historical Kublai Khan (1215-94), the grandson of Genghis Khan. Kublai led the Mongol conquest of China and made himself the first emperor of the Yuan dynasty in 1279. He was made famous in Europe by Marco Polo, who spent 20 years at Kublai’s court.”
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
“Imperative: Indicating explicit request, supplication, prohibition, warning, command, etc., e.g., ‘Stop!’ ‘Do let’s be serious.’”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
“How did poet Dylan Thomas die? He died at age thirty-nine in New York City after drinking eighteen straight whiskeys in a bar and lapsing into a coma.”
Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
Posted in English Language Arts, New York City, Quotes, Reference
Tagged literary oddities, poetry
“Anarchism (deriv. Gk. anarchia, non-rule) Doctrine advocating the abolition of all organized authority, since, in the words of Josiah Warren, ‘every man should be his own government, his own law, his own church.’ The first systematic exposition of anarchy was William Godwin’s Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793–which claimed that since men, when given free choice, are rational, sociable, and cooperative, they will form voluntary groups and live in social harmony without state control of the institution of property). Such a situation would be achieved not by revolution but by rational discussion, Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809-65), a French economist, elevated anarchism to the status of a mass movement in Qu’est-ce la propriete? (What Is Property?), published in 1840. In it he concluded that property is theft and that ‘governments are the scourge of God.’ He urged the establishment of non-profit making cooperative credit banks to provide interest-free capital. He disapproved of violence and of organized groups, including trade unions. These ideas were combined with a revolutionary philosophy by communistic anarchists, including the Russians Michael Bakunin (1814-76) and Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921), who favored ‘direct action’ by the workers to topple the state by all possible means, including assassination. In 1868 anarchists joined the First International, which was later split following conflicts between Marxists and the followers of Bakunin. Anarchists were later responsible for the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, King Humbert of Italy, Empress Elisabeth of Austria, President McKinley of America and President Carnot of France.
Anarchism differs from communism in its opposition to the state and its refusal to form political parties. Not all anarchists advocated violence. Philosophical anarchists such as the American Henry Thoreau (1817-62) were primarily individualists believing in a return to nature, nonpayment of taxes and passive resistance to state control. Leo Tolstoy (1828-1916) professed a Christian anarchism, believing the state to be inconsistent with Christianity and holding that refusal to pay taxes, render military service or recognize the courts would topple the established order. Such ideas influence Gandhi. In Spain the anarchists actually participated in government (1936-7) but the conflict between anarchists and communists within the Spanish Republican ranks during the Civil War, together with the mounting prestige of Soviet Communism between 1941 and 1948 led to a decline in the international influence of anarchism. But in the 1960s anarchist sentiment revived in the student movement’s revulsion at capitalism, coinciding with disillusionment at Soviet foreign policy. In recent anarchist movements such as the Baader-Meinhof group and Italian Red Brigades, terrorism is prevalent.”
Excerpted from: Cook, Chris. Dictionary of Historical Terms. New York: Gramercy, 1998.
“Illusion: The semblance of reality and verisimilitude (q.v.) in art which most writers seek to create in order to enable the reader to think that he is seeing, feeling, hearing, tasting and smelling, or, conceivable, having some extra-sensory or kinesthetic experience. The creation of illusion is a cooperative act between writer and reader. It brings about in the reader what Coleridge called “the willing suspension of disbelief” (q.v.). However, the writer also destroys illusion, sometimes for a specific purpose: for example, to address the reader directly—a not uncommon practice among 18th and 19th century novelists. The contrast helps the illusion and at the same time sharpens and clarifies the impression of things happening at a distance. Illusion should be distinguished from delusion and hallucination.”
Excerpted from: Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. New York: Penguin, 1992.
“Genitive: Indicating close and exclusive relationship, as by denoting possession, a characteristic or trait, or source, e.g., ‘the building’s shadow,’ ‘the woman’s touch.’”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
“Rotten Rejections: “Poem” by Sara Haardt (1923)
“The poem I can’t take. We have 200 or 300 bales of poetry stored in Hoboken, in the old Norddeutscher-Lloyd pier. There are 300,000 poets in America.”
Excerpted from: Barnard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
“International Style: An aspect of Gothic art of the late 14th and early 15th centuries characterized by a lyrical, naturalistic treatment of subject matter, gently flowing lines, and pretty, delicate coloration. Also called international gothic style. In architecture, the clean-surfaced glass-enclosed style formulated by the Bauhaus in the 1920s which has dominated commercial architecture since the 1950s. Mies van der Rohe, Philip Johnson, and Richard Neutra have been leading architects in the International Style. Le Corbusier’s machines a habiter (machines to live in), as he called the private homes commissioned early in his career, was a term meant to emphasize clean, precise, machine-like forms rather than a desire for mechanized living. But it also underlined modern architecture’s obsession with functionalist forms.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
“Tracking, Streaming: A widespread practice in American elementary and secondary school systems, tracking attempts to homogenize classrooms by placing students according to a range of criteria which may include pupil’s performances on standardized aptitude tests, classroom performance, perceived personal qualities and aspirations, and social class and ethnic origin. Different tracks typically offer different curricula, types of student-teacher relationship, and educational resources. The higher college tracks have been found to be more intellectually demanding, with better resources, and more favorable teacher expectations of pupils. Studies have highlighted the implications of tracking in terms of its negative psychological consequences for those placed in the lower tracks, reinforcement of ethnic and social class segregation, and perpetuation of inequality in society. The practice, issues, and debates have their British equivalent in the system of so-called streaming.”
Excerpted from: Marshall, Gordon, ed. Oxford Dictionary of Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
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