“Essential for Necessary. This solecism is common among the best writers in the country and England. ‘It is essential to go early’; ‘Irrigation is essential to the cultivation of arid lands’ and so forth. One thing is essential to another thing only if it is part of the essence of it—an important and indispensable part of it, determining its nature, the soul of it.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.
“Nineteen Eighty-Four: A dystopian novel (1949) by George Orwell (1903-50). The book comprises a prophecy of the totalitarian future of mankind, portraying a society in which government propaganda and terrorism destroy human awareness of reality. It is generally thought that Orwell named the novel by reversing the last two figures of the year in which it was written, 1948, but an article by Sally Coniam in the Times Literary Supplement of 31 December 1999 proposed another theory. In 1934 Orwell’s first wife, Eileen O’Shaughnessy, published a poem, ‘End of the Century 1984,’ in The Chronicle, the school magazine of Sunderland Church High School, where she had been a pupil in the 1920s. The poem was written to mark the school’s 50th anniversary, looking back then forward to the future and to the schools centenary in 1984. It seems likely that Orwell could have adopted the year accordingly, although for him it was a random date. Support for this lies in the poem’s mention of ‘telesalesmanship’ and ‘Telepathic Station 9,’ terms strangely modern for their time, which seem to prefigure Orwell’s own ‘Newspeak,’ teleprogrammes,’ and ‘telescreen.’
Following the publication of Orwell’s novel, the year 1984—until it came and went—was long regarded as apocalyptic, and as such was even entered in the Oxford English Dictionary. Appropriately enough, a film version entitled 1984 starring John Hurt and Richard Burton was released in 1984.”
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
“Analogy (noun) A theoretical comparison or point-by-point correspondence between particulars of two different things, rather than a categorical likeness; resemblance in certain parallels; logical inference that if two things are alike in some respects, they will be alike in others. Adj. analogical, analogous; adv. analogously; n. analogousness; v. analogize.”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
“Connoisseur, n. A specialist who knows everything about something and nothing about anything else.
An old wine-bibber having been smashed in a railway collision, some wine was poured upon his lips to revive him. ‘Pauillac, 1873,’ he murmured and died.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. David E. Schultz and S.J. Joshi, eds. The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2000.
“We can get over being poor, but it takes longer to get over ignorance.”
Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged philosophy/religion
“abstinence education: An educational program premised on the view that family life and sex education courses should teach students that sexual intercourse is inappropriate for young, unmarried people. Advocates say that adults must communicate an unambiguous that sex outside marriage is dangerous because of the risks of unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, such as AIDS. Critics of abstinence-only programs say the programs ignore the reality of widespread sexual activity among teenagers and deprive teens of information they need to protect themselves physically and emotionally.”
Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.
“Who created Babar the Elephant? Jean de Brunhoff, in stories beginning with The Story of Babar (1933). De Brunhoff’s son Laurent continued the series.”
Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged fiction/literature, readings/research
“token economy: A behavior therapy procedure in which tokens (such as coins or poker chips) are given for desired behavior. The tokens can then be exchanged for privileges or treats.”
Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.
“Epithet (noun): A characterizing word or phrase, whether a singular descriptive adjective or special appellation for a person or thing; personally disparaging expression or label; slur. Adjective: epithetic, epithetical.
‘The British restrictions go back in part to a 1562 pronouncement of Commons that “no reviling or nipping word must be used.” Today’s guide prescribes rules of “good temper and moderation” for parliamentary debate and is an extension of Sir Thomas Erskine May’s 1844 treatise on parliamentary usage. The following epithets are expressly forbidden: lie, liar, villain, hypocrite, Pharisee, criminal, slanderer, traitor, hooligan, blackguard, murderer, cad, dog, swine, stool pigeon, bastard, jackass, puppy (or its extension, cheeky young pup), ruffian, rat, guttersnipe, member returned by the refuse of a large constituency. Permitted, on the other hand, are Parliamentary leper, purveyor of inexactitude, goose, and halfwit. Mario Pei, The Story of the English Language.”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
“John Buchan’s 1915 action novel has been filmed at regular intervals, following Alfred Hitchcock’s classic version with Robert Donat as buccaneering hero James Hannay. Buchan was famously inspired to write the novel by his daughter counting the stairs of the nursing home in Broadstairs, where he was convalescing. He turned the phrase into a key mystery of the novel, and Hannay’s eventual discovery of its meaning (it is the number of steps down a cliff path to a waiting yacht) helps keep Britain’s military secrets intact from the Germans.
Hitchcock significantly changed Buchan’s plot for his 1935 movie, writing a climactic music hall scene in which ‘Mr. Memory’ is asked ‘What are the 39 Steps?’ and is about to reveal the answer (‘The 39 Steps is an organization of spies collecting information on behalf of the foreign office of…’) when he is shot dead. An equally evocative twist was introduced in the 1978 film starring Robert Powell, where the thirty-nine steps turn out to be the number of stairs in the clock tower of Big Ben.”
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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