“On hearing that Time editor Henry Luce objected to a profile of himself published in The New Yorker—on the grounds that not one nice thing was said about him in the whole piece—Ross told him, ‘That’s what you get for trying to be a baby tycoon.’”
Excerpted from: Drennan, Robert E., ed. The Algonquin Wits. New York: Kensington, 1985.
“You can’t learn too soon that the the most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.”
Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Portable Curmudgeon. New York: Plume, 1992.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged fiction/literature, humor, literary oddities
“Humanities: A term generally used in Europe and America for literature, languages, philosophy, art, history, theology, music, as opposed to the natural sciences and the social sciences. See HUMANISM.”
Excerpted from: Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. New York: Penguin, 1992.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
“Compendium (noun): A resume of written work, text, or area of inquiry; brief but comprehensive summary; collection or inventory. Adjective: compendious; Adverb: compendiously; Noun: compendiousness.
‘We—whoever “we” are—might define the compulsion as a pleasurable urge to express through verbal imagery a compendium of certain inexplicably correlated vagaries observed by him in mental patients, on an off, since his first hear at Chose.’ Vladimir Nabokov, Ada”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
“Neologism: A new word or sense of a word and the coining or use of new words and sense. Most neologisms in English belong in the following categories; (1) Compounding: couch potato, someone constantly slumped on a couch watching television: video-conferencing, a number of people taking part in a conference or conferences by means of video equipment rather than all meeting on one place. (2) Derivation: yuppie, formed from yup, the initial letters of the phrase ‘young urban professional’ by adding the suffix –ie; yuppiedom, the condition of being a yuppie, formed from yuppie by adding the further suffix -dom. (3) Shifting meaning: spin, a journalist’s term for a special bias or slant given to a piece of writing. (4) Extension in grammatical function: the nouns guest and host used as verbs. (5) Abbreviation: in Stock Exchange usage, arb from arbitrager or arbitrageur, one who sells securities or commodities simultaneously in different markets to benefit from unequal prices; the computer acronym GIGO, meaning garbage in, garbage out. (6) Back-Formation: disinform formed from disinformation (and not the reverse). (7) Blending: harmolodic mixing harmony and melodic. (8) Borrowing: loanwords such as glasnost from Russian; Calques or Loan Translations such found object from the French objet trouve. (9) Very rarely, Root-Creation, or Coinage from sounds with no previous known meaning whatever: googol, Kodak (both apparently formed ex nihilo.”
Excerpted from: McArthur, Tom. The Oxford Concise Companion to the English Language. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
“Zoomorphic Element: Ornament based on animal forms.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
“multiple intelligences (MI): The theory that many people have many ways of demonstrating their capabilities and that rather than being a single entity, intelligence is made up of distinct learning proficiencies that can work individually or together. In 1983, psychologist Howard Gardner introduced the concept of multiple intelligences in his book Frames of Mind to show that the usual school-based emphasis on rationality and logic is not the only way to be ‘intelligent.’ There is now a huge following for MI; many schools have adopted some version of it, and related training and professional development programs have proliferated. Gardner originally identified seven intelligences, only the first two of which are typically valued by schools: verbal-linguistic (the ability to use language to convey information well and to analyze language use); logical-mathematical (the capacity to analyze problems logically, grasp abstractions, recognize codes and patterns, and investigate issues scientifically) visual-spatial (the ability to recognize and manipulate the relationships of object, concepts, or images in different dimensions); musical-rhythmic (sensitivity to pitch and rhythm of sounds, as well as skill in performance, composition, and appreciation of musical patterns); bodily-kinesthetic (the ability to use body movement to connect with information, solve problems, and convey ideas); interpersonal (the awareness of others’ intentions, motivations, and feelings, and the ability to interact with others with understanding); and intrapersonal (the capacity to understand oneself and to recognize one’s own feelings, fears, and motivations). Gardner subsequently added and eighth intelligence: naturalist intelligence, or the ability to recognize, categorize, and draw on certain features of the natural environment. Critics say that these intelligences are actually aptitudes or abilities, or variations of rational thinking, rather than what most people consider general intelligence, and that no one can function successfully in the modern world without the linguistic and logical skills valued by schools.”
Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.
“The great tragedy of Science—the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.”
Thomas Henry Huxley, “Biogenesis and Abiogenesis” (1870)
Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged literary oddities, readings/research, science literacy
“Dalton Trumbo: (1905-1976) American screenwriter and novelist. One of Hollywood’s highest paid writers in the 1930s and 1940s, Trumbo was blacklisted and served a prison term for his refusal—as one of the ‘Hollywood Ten’—to answer questions about Communist affiliations posed by the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1947. Living in Mexico, he continued to write popular movie scripts, such as Exodus (1960), The Sandpiper (1965), and The Fixer (1968), although some of his work in the 1950s had to be credited to pseudonyms. He published four novels, including Johnny Got His Gun, all of which expressed his populist attitudes.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
“Descriptive and Prescriptive Grammar: Contrasting terms in linguistics. A descriptive grammar is an account of a language that seeks to describe how it is used objectively, accurately, systematically, and comprehensively. A prescriptive grammar is an account of a language that sets out rules (prescriptions) for how it should be used and for what it should not be used (proscriptions), based on norms derived from a particular model of grammar. For English, such a grammar may prescribe I as in It is I and proscribe me as in It’s me. It may proscribe like used as a conjunction, as in He behaved like he was in charge, prescribing instead He behaved as if he were in charge. Prescriptive grammars have been criticized for not taking account of language change and stylistic variation, and for imposing the norms of some groups on all users of a language. They have been discussed by linguists as exemplifying specific attitudes to language and usage. Traditional grammar books have often, however, combined description and prescription. Since the late 1950s, it has become common in linguistics to contrast descriptive grammars with generative grammars. The former involve a description of linguistic structures, usually based on utterance elicited from native-speaking informants. The latter, introduced by Chomsky, concentrate on providing an explicit account of an ideal native speaker’s knowledge of language (competence) rather than a description of samples (performance). Chomsky argued that generative grammars are more valuable, since they capture the creative aspect of human linguistic ability. Linguists generally regard both approaches as complementary.”
Excerpted from: McArthur, Tom. The Oxford Concise Companion to the English Language. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
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