Category Archives: Reference

These are materials for teachers and parents, and you’ll find, in this category, teachers copies and answer keys for worksheets, quotes related to domain-specific knowledge in English Language Arts and social studies, and quotes on issues of professional concern. See the Taxonomies page for more about this category.

Term of Art: Intensive

Posted on May 26, 2020 | Leave a comment

 “Intensive: Indicating appositional (or adjacent) use for emphasis, e.g. ‘I myself,’ ‘The word itself.’”

Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.

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Common Errors in English Usage: Allude, Refer

Posted on May 26, 2020 | Leave a comment

Alright, before I go out into the first hot day of the year, here is a worksheet on distinguishing use of the verbs allude and refer and thereby distinguishing between the acts of alluding and referring. Incidentally, allude is used only intransitively whereas refer is used both intransitively and transitively.

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

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Neo-Romanticism

Posted on May 26, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Neo-Romanticism: A minor movement that paralleled Surrealism but concentrated on more lyrical subjects, particularly man’s environment and emotions. The key figures were Christian Berard, Eugene Berman, and Pavel Tchelitchew.”

Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.

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Lyndon B. Johnson on the Great Society

Posted on May 22, 2020 | Leave a comment

“The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents…It is a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods.”

Lyndon B. Johnson in a speech at the University of Michigan (1964)

Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.

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Urdu

Posted on May 22, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Urdu: An Indo-Aryan language of the Indian subcontinent, associated with the Moghul Empire, in which Persian was the court language. It is used especially Muslims and written in a variant of the Perso-Arabic script. Closely related to Hindi, Urdu has a similar pronunciation and grammar but a more heavily Persianized and Arabicized vocabulary. It is the national language of Pakistan and is its co-official language with English. In India, it is the state language of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, and associate state language of the state of Uttar Pradesh. It is spoken as a first language by c.30m and as a second language by c.100m people in India and Pakistan, and some thousands of people of Indo-Pakistani origin in Fiji, Guyana, South Africa, the UK, and the US.”

Excerpted from: McArthur, Tom. The Oxford Concise Companion to the English Language. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

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Posted in Essays/Readings, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences

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The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Posted on May 22, 2020 | Leave a comment

“’The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock: A poem by T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), first published in 1915. It depicts the doubts and sexual inhibitions of a shy Bostonian by the name of J. Alfred Prufrock. Eliot took the name of his celebrated central character from that of a St. Louis furniture company.

‘I grow old… I grow old…

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled…

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think they will sing for me.

T.S. Eliot: ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’”

Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.

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Term of Art: Ingressive

Posted on May 22, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Ingressive: Indicating the beginning of an action, state, etc., e.g., the verbs ‘get,’ ‘set out,’ “awaken.’ Also INCEPTIVE, INCHOATIVE”

Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.

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Harry S Truman on Politics as a Vocation

Posted on May 21, 2020 | Leave a comment

“My choice early in life was either to be a piano player in a whorehouse or a politician. And to tell the truth, there’s hardly any difference.”

Harry S Truman

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.

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20 Fingers and Toes

Posted on May 21, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Twenty is perhaps the oldest, most natural large number for mankind to relate to, for it is the number we achieve by counting up all our fingers and toes. Echoes of this unit (called Vigesimal) can still be found in both the French and English language. The French still express eighty as ‘quatre-vingts’ (four twenties), while English keeps a special word (‘score’) for this number, as in the expression ‘four score and ten.’ And until decimalization was introduced in 1971 the English monetary unit was still so ordered, with twenty shillings to the pound.”

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.

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Term of Art: Indicative

Posted on May 21, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Indicative: Indicating the usual form of a verb: simple assertion or interrogation, or expression in terms of what is a fact or is clearly related to reality, e.g., ‘The book is on the table.’”

Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.

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