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.

Word Origins: Accolade

“accolade: [E17th] The Provencal word acolada is the source of accolade. This literally meant an embrace or a clasping around the neck, and described the gesture of a friendly hug that was sometimes made when knighting someone, as an early alternative to a stroke on the shoulder with the flat of a sword. The ultimate root of the Provencal word is Latin collum ‘neck,’ from which we also get collar [ME].”

Excerpted from: Creswell, Julia. Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Emerson on the End of the Human Race

“The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson 

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Portable Curmudgeon. New York: Plume, 1992.

Term of Art: Self-Regulation

“self-regulation: The ability to regulate and monitor a person’s own actions and behavior. Problems with effective self-regulation are a primary struggle for students with attention and executive function problems.

Effective self-regulation depends on a complex interaction of thinking, feeling, and perception.

Problems with self-regulation may stem from many different sources. Individuals with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder typically have problems with self-regulation due to underlying brain processing difficulties with memory, attention, and executive function, particularly as these affect the ability to control impulses and restrain and monitor internal thoughts. Problems with self-regulation also may be caused by other psychological conditions, such as bipolar disorder, conduct disorders, or obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Development of more effective ways to self-regulate is part of an effective coaching and strategy development program for individuals with ADHD. In general, while self-regulation may be seen as an underlying brain function, it is also learned behavior. Therefore, it is possible to teach individuals how to change patterns of impulsive and reckless behavior.”

Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.

Deadwood

“Deadwood (noun): Useless or expendable words that add nothing to clarity or meaning; verbiage; redundancy. See also VERBALISM.

‘Overly specific’ is inferior to “over specific,” as “inside of her” is to “inside her”; deadwood is always undesirable. John Simon. Paradigms Lost'”

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

Jorge Amado

“Jorge Amado: (1912-2001) Brazilian novelist. Born and reared on a cacao plantation, he published his first novel at 20. His early works, including The Violent Land (1942), explore the exploitation of suffering of plantation workers. Despite imprisonment and exile for leftist activities, he continued to produce novels, many of which have been banned in Brazil and Portugal. Later works such as Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon (1958), Dona Flor and her Two Husbands (1966), and The War of the Saints (1993) preserve Amado’s political attitude in their more subtle satire.”

Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.

Gustavo Alvarez Gardeazabal

“Gustavo Alvarez Gardeazabal: (1945-) Colombian writer and political figure. Growing up during La Violencia, the civil strife that took over 300,000 lives between 1946 and 1959, he developed a black sense of humor. His early novel, Condores no entierran todos los dias (1971) is the riveting story of a conservative who becomes a death squad leader. El bazar de los idiotas (1974; tr. Bazaar of the Idiots, 1991), a vicious satire on intolerance and religious gullibility, is one of Colombia’s most read novels. Pepe Botellas (1984) is a hilarious political fable about a Cuban exile who tries to become President of Colombia. Alvarez Gardeazabal’s recent fiction has dealt with the corrosive effects of the drug trade on Colombian society.”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

Octavio Paz

“Octavio Paz: (1914-1998) Mexican poet, writer, and diplomat. Educated at the University of Mexico, Paz published his first book of poetry, Luna Silvestre (“Savage Moon”) in 1933. He later founded and edited several important literary reviews. Influenced in turn by Marxism, surrealism, existentialism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, his poetry uses rich imagery in dealing with metaphysical questions, and his most prominent theme is the human ability to overcome existential solitude through erotic love and artistic creativity. His prose works include The Labyrinth of Solitude (1950), an influential essay on Mexican history and culture. He was Mexico’s ambassador to India 1962-68. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1990.”

Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.

Pancho Villa

“Pancho Villa originally Doroteo Arango (1878-1923) Mexican guerilla leader. Orphaned at a young age, he spent his adolescence as a fugitive, having murdered a landowner in revenge for an assault on his sister. An advocate of radical land reform, he joined  Francisco Madero’s uprising against Porfirio Diaz. His Division del Norte joined forces with Venustiano Carranza to overthrow Victoriano Huerta and in 1914 was forced to leave with Emiliano Zapata. In 1916, to demonstrate the Carranza did not control the north, he raided a town in New Mexico. A U.S. force led by General John Pershing was sent against him, but his popularity and knowledge of his home territory made him impossible to capture. He was granted a pardon after Carranza’s overthrow (1920) but was assassinated three years later. See also Mexican Revolution, Alvaro Obregon.”

Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.

Cesar Davila Andrade

“Cesar Davila Andrade: (1918-1967) Ecuadorian poet, short-story writer, and essayist. Davila Andrade published eight books of verse and two collections of short stories before committing suicide in a hotel in Caracas, Venezuela, a victim of prolonged depressions and alcoholism. While his work is known mainly in Ecuador and Venezuela, he was most often compared to Neruda and Vallejo. Of most influence as a poet, he carried certain key obsessions—evil in the form of sickness, passion, or death; sex as annihilation, and love as the absolute ideal—through several poetic incarnations. He began in the tradition of love poetry, as seen in Cancion a Teresita (1946). The second phase, which includes Arco de instantes (1959) and Boletin y elegia de las Mitas (1967), is dedicated to poetic experimentation and the geography and people of his American continent. The final period is complex, personal, and hermetic, best characterized by Conexiones de tierra (1964), which often voices his views of life, literature, and aesthetics. A lover of both the mystical and prosaic, he perhaps never managed a successful reconciliation of these twin currents in either his poetry or his life.”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

Jose (Benjamin) Quintero

“Jose (Benjamin) Quintero: (1924-1999 U.S. (Panamanian-born) theatrical director. After studying theater at USC, he directed his first play in 1949. He was a founder of the Broadway theater Circle in the Square, where he directed regularly from 1950, establishing the house as a major center for serious theater. His direction of Tennessee Williams’s Summer and Smoke (1952) confirmed his reputation and made a star of Geraldine Page. He was best known for his productions of 20th-century plays, especially those of Williams and Eugene O’Neill, including The Iceman Cometh (1956), Long Day’s Journey Into Night (1956), and A Moon for the Misbegotten (1973, Tony Award).”

Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.