“socioeconomic status: A term used to describe the home backgrounds of individuals or groups, taking into account such elements as family income and education attainment.”
Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.
“Diminutive (noun): A word or word element indicating (often by addition of a suffix) small size or familiarly lovable, pitiable, or dismissible qualities, sometimes condescendingly. Adverb: diminutively.
‘My grandmother, too, used to put other people’s ailments into the diminutive; strokelets were what her friends had. Aldo said he was bored to tearsies by my grandmother’s diminutives.’ Renata Adler, Speedboat“
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
“diamond: [ME] The name of the gem derives from a medieval Latin alteration of Latin adamans ADAMANT. Adamant was a legendary rock or mineral of many supposed properties. One of these was hardness, which was a reason why people sometimes identified it with diamond. A diamond is forever was used as an advertising slogan for De Beers Consolidated Mines from the late 1940s onwards, and in 1956 Ian Fleming used Diamonds are Forever as the title of his latest James Bond thriller, but the idea was first expressed by the American writer Anita Loos, in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925). ‘Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend‘ was a song written by Leo Robin and Jule Styne for the 1949 stage musical of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.”
Excerpted from: Creswell, Julia. Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
“adamant: [OE] The Greek word adamas, originally meaning “invincible or untameable,” came to be applied to the hardest metal of stone and to diamond, the hardest naturally occurring substance. Via Latin it was the source not only of adamant but also of DIAMOND. In Old English adamant was the name given to a legendary rock so hard that is was believed to be impenetrable. Early medieval Latin writers mistakenly explained the word as coming from adamare ‘take a liking to’ and associated adamant with the lodestone or magnet which ‘takes a liking’ to iron, and the word passed into modern languages with this confusion of meaning. The modern use, with its notion of unyielding conviction, is much more recent, probably dating from the 1930s.”
Excerpted from: Creswell, Julia. Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
“circular flow of income: The reciprocal flow of income between consumers and producers: consumers earn income from employment and profit, and spend this income on the products of firms. If there were neither injections of new purchasing power into this flow nor leakages out of it, total income in each period would be equal to the spending arising from incomes in the period, and total income would remain constant over time. Injections of new purchasing power not derived from income can be made by investment, government spending, or exports. Leakages from the circular flow are caused by saving, tax payments, or imports. If injections and leakages are equal, incomes will be constant; if injections exceed leakages, incomes rise over time; and if leakages exceed injections, incomes fall.”
Excerpted from: Black, John, Nigar Hashimzade, and Gareth Miles. Oxford Dictionary of Economics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Posted in Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
“receptive language: The forms of language that are received as input from listening and reading. Listening and reading are receptive skills that involve feeding information into the brain, as opposed to speaking and writing, which are the expressive forms of language. Most individuals maintain a fairly similar set of receptive and expressive, oral and written language function, but those with learning problems may have specific deficits in one or more of these areas.
Individuals with dyslexia or specific reading disabilities have problems with receptive language, involving deficits with both oral language and processing sounds (phonological processing), and significant problems in decoding and understanding texts. Some individuals with these problems still have relatively strong oral expression, although most will have problems with written expression due to problems with reading written language.”
Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.
“Dichotomy (noun): A division or counterposing into two groups or positions, usually contradictory or mutually exclusive; a specified, vis–a-vis contrast. Adjective: dichotomous; adverb: dichotomously; noun: dichotomousness, dichotomist; verb; dichotomize.
‘I submit to you staffers that the solution establishes itself before our very eyes: namely, that an absolute—in any particular field—must be presented as a dichotomy! Yes, if one mother company, such as our Vanity, could confront the public with with a pure dichotomy, in any particular product, it would gain virtual monopoly there. Yes, and we will present such a dichotomy.’ Terry Southern, The Magic Christian”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
“Ready-mades: Associated with Dada, especially with Marcel Duchamp, these are randomly selected and mass-produced found objects, often nonsensically combined and presented as art. For Duchamp, found objects implied the exercise of aesthetic taste, whereas ready-mades did not.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
“achievement motivation: The need to perform well, or achievement motivation, significantly determines a person’s effort and persistence in reaching some given standard of excellence, or in comparison with competitors, and the level of aspiration that is involved in that standard or competition. This motivation is seen by psychologist D.C. McClelland (1961;1971) as a major determinant of entrepreneurial activity and as a cause of rapid economic growth when widely dispersed in a society. Many managerial roles are also said to require individuals with a high need for achievement if they are to be performed well. McClelland believes that such needs are learned in childhood, when individuals are socialized into the culture of their societies, rather than being innate. Other needs that may be learned are the needs for power, affiliation and autonomy.”
Excerpted from: Abercrombie, Nicholas, Stephen Hill, and Bryan S. Turner. Dictionary of Sociology. New York: Penguin, 2006.
As I prepared to publish this Cultural Literacy worksheet on hedonism, I found myself thinking that most high school students, most adolescents, do understand that the pursuit of pleasure and happiness is, if not the highest good in life, is close enough. I certainly did as a teenager. This short reading does a nice job connecting the concept of hedonism to the Epicureans.
In any case, this is a half-page worksheet with a two-sentence reading and three comprehension questions.
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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