“What playwright wrote a play called Paradise Lost that was not based on Milton’s poem? Clifford Odets, in 1935. The play was about the fall of a middle-class family.”
Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
“Unified science or unity-of-science view: In the philosophy of logical positivism, the doctrine holding that all science share the same language, laws, and method. The unity of language has been taken to mean that either that all scientific statements could be restated as a set of protocol sentences describing sense-data or that all scientific terms could be defined using physics terms. The unity of law means that the laws of the various sciences must be deduced from some set of fundamental laws (e.g. those of physics). The unity of method means that the procedures for supporting statements in the various sciences are basically the same. The unity-of-science movement that arose in the Vienna Circle held to those three unities, and Rudolf Carnap’s ‘physicalism’ supported the notion that all the terms and statements of empirical science could be reduced to terms and statements in the language of physics.”
Excerpted/Adapted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
“text-to-self connection: A learning strategy applied by elementary students while reading a text. Prompted by the teacher, students ask themselves whether the text they are reading reminds them of something that happened in their own lives, Advocates claim that making these connections helps students think about and understand what they are learning. Critics contend that the approach is artificial, makes reading a technical process, and does not help students appreciate literature that does not relate to their own lives.”
Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.
“Zeno: Father of the paradox. Philosopher of the fifth century BC, A source of Socrates’ technique and of humor as a weapon against power and pedantry. The other Zeno, also a philosopher and father of the Stoic movement, committed suicide.”
Excerpted from: Saul, John Ralston. The Doubter’s Companion. New York: The Free Press, 1994.
“Kinetic Art: Art that moves, driven by atmospheric forces (e.g. Alexander Calder’s mobiles) or by motors, magnets, etc. Retrospectively applied to sculpture in motion created since the 1920s, recent kinetic art includes machine ‘sculptures’ by the art collective Survival Research Laboratory.”
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
“Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.”
H.G. Wells
Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.
“Bowdlerization (noun): The altering, rewording, or striking out of parts of a literary work out of a sense of propriety or prudery, often with euphemistic paraphrases; moralistic censorship; prudishly modified version of a book. N. bowdlerism; v. bowdlerize. Also EXPURGATION
‘It now develops that even before it was submitted to the publisher, Dreiser’s work was greatly censored—indeed, bowdlerized—by his wife, “Jug,” and a good friend, newspaperman Arthur Henry.’ Ray Walters, The New York Times”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
“tactile perception: Perception through which the sensory system of touch, in which direct physical contact is transmitted through the nervous system to the brain.”
Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.
“Keystone: The wedge-shaped stone at the center point of an arch regarded as locking the other stones of the arch in place.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
“Curious for Odd, or Singular. To be curious is to have an inquiring mind or mood—curiosity.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged diction/grammar/style/usage, humor, literary oddities
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