“adjective phrase Latin. Of its own kind; peculiar, unique.
1996 Spectator Major’s rhinocerine obstinacy in putting his personal political survival before any other consideration is sui generis…”
Excerpted from: Speake, Jennifer. The Oxford Dictionary of Foreign Words and Phrases. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
“Phonics taught as a supplemental learning aid rather than as an integral part of the program of reading instruction, often in separate workshops during special time periods.”
Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.
“No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library.”
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
“Shallow, violent, and scurrilous.”
William Edward Hartpole Lecky, A History of England in the 18th Century 1882
Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged humor, literary oddities, united states history
“A symbol of freedom. When a slave was manumitted by the Romans, a small Phrygian cap, usually of red felt, called pileus, was placed on his head; he was termed libertinus (‘freeman’), and his name was registered in the city tribes. When Saturninus, in 100 BC, possessed himself of the Roman Capitol, he hoisted a similar cap to the top of his spear, to indicate that all slaves who had joined his standard should be free; Marius employed the same symbol against Sulla; and when Caesar was murdered, the conspirators marched forth in a body with a cap elevated on a spear, in token of liberty. In the French Revolution, the red cap of liberty was adopted by the revolutionists as an emblem of their freedom from royal authority.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
Posted in English Language Arts, Essays/Readings, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged readings/research
“Cartesian, adj. Relating to Descartes, a famous philosopher, author of the celebrated dictum Cogito ergo sum—whereby he was pleased to suppose he demonstrated the reality of human existence. The dictum might be improved, however, thus: Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum—’I think that I think, therefore I think that I am’; as close an approach to certainty as any philosopher has yet made.”
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, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged humor, literary oddities, philosophy/religion
“On what novel is George Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess (1935) based? It is based on Porgy (1925), by Du Bose Heyward. Heyward and his wife, Dorothy, won a Pulitzer prize for their dramatic version of the novel. Porgy is a crippled beggar who lives on Catfish Row in Charleston, South Carolina. Bess is his drug-addicted mistress.”
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, Quotes, Reference
Tagged drama/theater, fiction/literature, music, united states history
“That a book like this could be written–published here–sold, presumably over the counters, leaves one questioning the ethical and moral standards…there is a place for the exploration of abnormalities that does not lie in the public domain. Any librarian surely will question this for anything but the closed shelves. Any bookseller should be very sure that he knows in advance that he is selling very literate pornography.”
Kirkus Reviews
Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged fiction/literature, literary oddities
“An illustrative moral or religious story, usually brief and with generalized, simple characters and universal human application; telling or cautionary account.
‘I have never read a story better than Endurance, Alfred Lansing’s account of the Shackleton expedition to Antarctica; but no one considers it literature. If Mailer had written it, might we not read the same text as a parable or something or other.’”
Annie Dillard, Living by Fiction
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged fiction/literature, poetry, term of art
“A hundred is a ubiquitous element of power and finance. If ancient Greek gods were angered the could be appeased with the bloodbath of hetacomb—the sacrifice of 100 oxen. A hundred was also long considered the largest group able to be governed by the command of one man. So there were 100 soldiers under the command of a Roman centurion; 100 slave-soldiers under the command of a mameluke emir; and, following the Roman model, there were 100 senators (two for each of the fifty states) in the US Senate. More prosaically, 100 units comprise all the major currencies of the world—be the yuan, yen, dollars, euros, rials, rupees, dinars, or pounds.”
Excerpted from: Rogerson, Barnaby. Rogerson’s Book of Numbers: The Culture of Numbers–from 1,001 Nights to the Seven Wonders of the World. New York: Picador, 2013.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged literary oddities, numeracy
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