“Dilapidated for Ruined. Said of a building, or other structure. But the word is from the Latin lapis, a stone, and cannot properly be used of any but a stone structure.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.
“socialization: A process by which people learn to cooperate with others toward common goals, or at least to act appropriately when placed in contact with others.”
Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.
“Bauhaus: (German, ‘house of architecture’) A school of architecture and design, founded in Weimar Germany, in 1919 by Walter Gropius. The school stressed functionalism in art and tried to unite the creative arts and the technology of modern mass production with 20th-century architecture. In addition to more strictly architectural studies, courses in painting, handicrafts, the theatre, and typography were given by outstanding artists, including Lyonel Feininger, Vassily Kandinsky, and Paul Klee. Functionalism, or the international style, in architecture and a number of examples of industrial design, such as the tubular lighting and steel furniture of Marcel Breuer, were first developed at the Bauhaus. In 1925, the school moved to the buildings designed for it by Gropius in Dessau; three years later, Mies van der Rohe became its director.
The Bauhaus was attacked by Hitler’s regime, and in 1933 it was forced to close. However, its great influence on modern architecture and design continued in Europe and the U.S. through its masters and students.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
“The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.”
Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Portable Curmudgeon. New York: Plume, 1992.
“Lazlo Moholy-Nagy: (1895-1946) Hungarian painter, photographer, and art teacher. After studying law in Budapest, he went to Berlin in 1919, and in 1923 he took charge of the metal workshop of the Bauhaus as well as the Bauhaus-book series of publications. As painter and photographer he worked predominantly with light, His ‘photograms’ were composed directly on film, and his ‘light modulators’ (oil paintings on transparent or polished surfaces) included mobile light effects. As an educator, he developed a widely accepted curriculum to develop students’ natural visual gifts instead of specialized skills. Fleeing Nazi Germany in 1935, he went to London and then to Chicago, where he organized and headed the New Bauhaus.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
“Crusade (noun): A journalistic focus on a cause or an abuse, such as a needed political corruption of governmental measure; purposive, editorialized, civic-minded reporting. Noun: crusader; verb: crusade.
‘The truth is that this crusading business is one of the worst curses of journalism, and perhaps the main enemy of that fairness and accuracy and intelligent purpose which should mark the self-respecting newspaper. It trades upon one of the sorriest weaknesses of man—the desire to see the other fellow jump. It is at the heart of that Puritanical frenzy, that obscene psychic sadism, which is our national vice. No newspaper, carrying on a crusade against a man, ever does it fairly and decently; not many of them even make the pretense.’ H.L. Mencken, A Gang of Pecksniffs”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
“Mullion: The vertical element or elements that divide a window into two or more lights.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
“self esteem: A particularly positive way of experiencing the self that involves emotional, evaluation, and thinking components.
Self-esteem is the ability to experience oneself as being competent to cope with the basic challenges of life, and of being worthy of happiness. By extension, it is confidence in the ability to learn, to make appropriate choices and decisions, and respond effectively to change, It also involves the experience that success, achievement, fulfillment, and happiness are right and natural.
While many things can make a person feel good temporarily, if self-esteem is not grounded in reality, it is not self-esteem.
If a teacher treats students with respect, avoids ridicule, deals fairly, and projects a benevolent conviction about every student’s potential, then that teacher is supporting both self-esteem and the process of learning and mastering challenges. On the other hand, if a teacher tries to nurture self-esteem by empty praise that bears no relationship to the students’ actual accomplishments, then self-esteem is undermined and so is academic achievement.
Research indicates that there is a significant relationship between self-esteem and academic achievement, and that if a student’s self-esteem can be improved, academic achievement tends to follow. Many factors influence self-esteem, including parents, teachers, and other adults, and biology and life experiences.
Many students with a learning disability experience low self-esteem due to years of academic failure. This is why it is especially important to build positive self-esteem by creating opportunities for success, giving sincere praise, and cultivating talents and strengths in individuals with learning disabilities.”
Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.
“absurdity: The experience of absurdity is a common theme in the work of novelists such as Dostoevsky and Kafka, as well as in the many varieties of existentialism. The early essays of Albert Camus and his first novel The Outsider are classic modern expressions of this experience. The realization that existence is absurd arises from the sense of futility and meaninglessness provoked by the perception that there is a divorce between the human aspiration towards infinity and the finite nature of actual human experience, or between the intellectual desire for rationality and the irrationality of the physical world. The world is experienced as something unintelligible, and as the product of random combinations of events and circumstances. Although the experience of the absurd can induce s suicidal despair, the realization that there is no God and that human beings are not immortal can also produce an exhilarating sense of freedom and inspire a revolt against the human condition. There is a somewhat tenuous connection between the literary-philosophical notion of the absurd and the themes of the Theater of the Absurd.”
Excerpted from: Macey, David. The Penguin Dictionary of Critical Theory. New York: Penguin, 2001.
“trade war: A situation in which two or more nations restrict one another’s exports. Trade wars are ancient and modern. Until Adam Smith and the contemporary physiocrats. No thinkers believed in free trade. All economists believed that the best policy was to maximize one’s own exports; many added that it was good to restrict others’ imports. If pursued worldwide, such policies were obviously self-defeating, but that does not lessen their attraction to individual national policy makers. The Napoleonic Wars were largely a trade war between France and her allies and the UK, which caused serious damage to third parties, such as the USA.
The nineteenth century saw the heyday of the bilateral trade treaty and the invention of the most favored nation clause. Between them, these devices restricted the scope for trade wars. However, the revival of protection in the 1920s and 1930s revived trade wars. Since the 1960s, world trade politics has become multilateral rather than bilateral (GATT, World Trade Organization). This has not eliminated trade wars, but has made them multinational also. If the EU declares war on US hormone-fortified beef and export subsidies, then the USA may declare war on EU luxury goods and Caribbean bananas.”
Excerpted from: McLean, Iain, and Alistair McMillan, editors. Oxford Concise Dictionary of Politics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
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