“Matronym, Matronymic (noun): A name derived from that of one’s mother or a maternal ancestor, usually by addition of a suffix or prefix. Adjective: matronymic, matronymical; adverb: matronymically. Also METRONYMIC”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
“Rationalization: The act of justifying discreditable actions after the event, or a justification or excuse put forward in this way. In psychoanalysis, a defense mechanism in which a false but reassuring or self-serving explanation that in reality arises from a repressed wish. The term was first used in the narrower psychoanalytic sense in 1908 by the Welsh psychoanalyst Ernest Jones (1879-1958) in an article in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology entitled ‘Rationalization in Everyday Life.’”
Excerpted from: Colman, Andrew M., ed. Oxford Dictionary of Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
“by-election: Election of a member to a representative body to fill a vacancy caused by the death or resignation of a former member during a normal term of office.”
Excerpted from: Cook, Chris. Dictionary of Historical Terms. New York: Gramercy, 1998.
“Cliometrics: A term formed by compounding the muse of history and the concept of measurement, devised by its practitioners to describe the ‘new quantitative economic history’ which developed in the United States during the late 1950s, and rapidly became controversial in the American and European historical community. Cliometricians applied sophisticated statistical techniques (such as regression analysis) to historical data, and (to cite the example of the most prominent studies) attempted to calculate the profitability of slavery in the period before the American Civil War, and to quantify the contribution of the American railroads to economic growth (see R.W. Fogel and S.L. Engerman, Time on the Cross, 1974, and Fogel’s Railroads and American Economic Growth, 1964).
Cliometric work was controversial, not only because of the usual distrust of the (usually reconstructed) numerical data and the (occasionally questionable) use of advanced statistical techniques, but also because the most prominent studies framed their hypotheses in the novel form of explicit counterfactuals. That is, for example, they asked the question ‘What would have happened if the railroads had not been built?’ Most also rested on what were deemed to be the rather narrow behaviorist assumptions of neo-classical economics.
With hindsight, it is easy to see that the new quantitative history was not in fact all that novel, since many of the leading economists and economic historians of the early twentieth century made liberal use of quantitative historical data and neo-classical theory respectively. The use of large-scale data-sets, further encouraged by developments in computer technology, is now established practice in modern history. In contemporary usage, the term cliometrics is still commonly applied to attempts to apply social science theory and statistical analyses to historical data, but it no longer describes a sharply defined school. Cliometric analyses are now found across a wide range of substantive historical subject areas.”
Excerpted from: Marshall, Gordon, ed. Oxford Dictionary of Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Posted in Essays/Readings, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged numeracy, professional development, readings/research, term of art
“Reciprocal Pronoun: A term sometimes used for the compound pronouns each other and one another, which express a two-way interaction: Romeo and Juliet love each other/one another )Romeo loved Juliet and Juliet loved Romeo). In meaning, reciprocal pronouns contrast with reflexive pronouns: The Montagues and the Capulets loved themselves (The Montagues loved the Montagues, and the Capulets loved the Capulets). Reciprocal pronouns are, however, like reflexives in not normally being used as subjects: not They wondered where each other/one another was.”
Excerpted from: McArthur, Tom. The Oxford Concise Companion to the English Language. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
“indirect object: An object whose semantic role is characteristically that of a recipient, e.g. to your sister in He blew a kiss to your sister; also, in most accounts, your sister in He blew your sister a kiss. Distinguished as an element in a ditransitive construction from a direct object.
The relation between sentences such as these has been described in terms of dative movement. It is in part because that relation is possible that to your sister can be distinguished, as an object, from directional phrases such as to the seaside as in He sent his family to the seaside.”
Excerpted from: Matthews, P.H., ed. The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.
“Imperialism: (deriv. Lat. imperium, power). Acquisition and administration of an empire, often as a part of general commercial and industrial expansion. From the 15th century onwards, Spain, Portugal, Holland, France, and Britain began building overseas empires. Modern imperialism, however, probably dates from the 1880s and the scramble for colonies in under-developed Africa. Marxism-Leninism ascribes the survival of capitalism and World War I to this late surge of European imperialism. Italy, Germany and Japan failed to acquire empires in the 19th century due to their late national unification or industrialization; they attempted to do so in the 20th century by war. The USSR had been described as an imperialist power because it had absorbed the formerly independent countries of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania and had sought to dominated neighboring states, not only Warsaw Pact countries but also Afghanistan and China. US involvement in Southeast Asia and Latin America had also resulted in the USA also being termed an imperialist power.”
Excerpted from: Cook, Chris. Dictionary of Historical Terms. New York: Gramercy, 1998.
Posted in Essays/Readings, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged professional development, term of art
“Anathema (noun) An ecclesiastical pronouncement that damns, bans, or excommunicates the person so denounced; solemn curse or declaration of obloquy; unyielding condemnation; person or thing regarded as accursed, detestable, or to be excluded at all costs. N. anathemization; v. anathemize
‘Confiscate! The mere word was anathema to him, and he stormed back and forth in excoriating condemnation, shaking a piercing finger of rebuke in the guilt-ridden faces of Captain Cathcart, Colonel Korn, and the poor battle-scarred captain with the submachine gun who commanded the M.P.s.’ Joseph Heller Catch 22″
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged fiction/literature, term of art
“Symbol and Symbolism: The word symbol derives from the Greek verb symballien ‘to throw together’, and its noun symbolon ‘mark’, ’emblem’, ‘token’ or ‘sign.’ It is an object, animate or inanimate, which represents or “stands for” something else. As Coleridge put it, a symbol ‘is characterized by a translucence of the special [i.e. the species] in the individual.’ A symbol differs from an allegorical (see ALLEGORY) sign in that it has a real existence, whereas an allegorical sign is arbitrary.
Scales, for example, symbolize justice; the orb and scepter, monarchy and rule; a dove, peace; a goat, lust; the lion, strength and courage; the bulldog, tenacity; the rose, beauty; the lily, purity; the Stars and Stripes, America and its States; the Cross, Christianity; the swastika (or crooked cross) Nazi Germany and Fascism; the gold, red and black hat of the Montenegrin symbolizes glory, blood and mourning. The scales of justice may also be allegorical; as might, for instance, a dove, a goat or a lion.
Actions and gestures are also symbolic. The clenched fist symbolizes aggression. Beating of the breast signifies remorse. Arms raised denote surrender. Hands clasped and raised suggest suppliance. A slow upward movement of the head accompanied by a closing of the eyes means, in Turkish, ‘no.’ Moreover, most religious and fertility rites are rich with symbolic movements and gestures, especially the Roman Mass.
A literary symbol combines an image with a concept (words themselves are a kind of symbol). It may be public or private, universal or local. They exist, so to speak. As Baudelaire expressed in his sonnet Correspondances:
La Nature est un temple ou de vivants piliers
Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles;
L’homme y passé a travers des forets de symboles…
In literature an example of a public or universal symbol is a journey into the underworld (as in the work of Virgil, Dante and James Joyce) and return from it. Such a journey may be an interpretation of a spiritual experience, a dark night of the soul and a kind of redemptive odyssey. Examples of private symbols are those that recur in the work of W.B. Yeats: the sun and moon, a tower, a mask, a tree, a winding stair and a hawk.
Dante’s Divina Commedia is structurally symbolic, In Macbeth there is a recurrence of the blood image symbolizing guilt and violence. In Hamlet weeds and disease symbolize corruption and decay. In King Lear clothes symbolize appearances and authority; and the storm scene in this play may be taken as symbolic of cosmic and domestic chaos to which ‘unaccomodated man’ is exposed. The poetry of Blake and Shelley is heavily marked with symbols. The shooting of the albatross in Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner is symbolic of all sin and stands for lack of respect for life and a proper humility towards the natural order. In his Four Quartets T.S. Eliot makes frequent use of the symbols of Fire and the Rose. To a lesser extent symbolism is an essential part of Eliot’s Ash Wednesday (especially Part III) and The Waste Land.
In prose works the great white whale of Melville’s Moby Dick (the ‘grand-god’) is a kind of symbolic creature—a carcass which symbol hunters have been dissecting for years. Much of the fiction of William Golding (especially Lord of the Flies, Pincher Martin and The Spire) depends upon powerful symbolism capable of more interpretations than one. To these examples should be added the novels and short stories of Kafka, and the plays of Maeterlinck, Andreyev, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Synge and O’Neill.
In these works we find instances of the use of a concrete image to express an emotion or an abstract idea; or as Eliot put it when explaining his term ‘objective correlative’ (q.v.), finding ‘a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events, which shall be the formula of that particular emotion.’
There is plentiful symbolism in much 19th century French poetry. In Oeuvres completes (1891) Mallarme explained symbolism as the art of evoking an object ‘little by little so as to reveal a mood’ of, conversely, ‘the art of choosing an object and extracting from it an etat d’ame.’ This ‘mood’ he contended, was to be extracted by ‘a series of deciphering.’
Mallarme’s follower Henri Regnier made the additional point that a symbol is a kind of comparison between the abstract and the concrete in which one of the terms of the comparison is only suggested. Thus it is implicit, oblique, not spelt out.
As far as particular objects are concerned, this kind of symbolism is often private and personal. Another kind of symbolism is known as the ‘transcendental.’ In this kind, concrete images are used as symbols to represent a general or universal ideal world of which the real world is a shadow. Sir Thomas Browne, long before theories of symbolism were abundant, suggested the nature of this in his magnificent neo-Platonic phrase: ‘The sun itself is the dark simulacrum, and light is the shadow of God.’
The ‘transcendental’ concept is Platonic in origin, was elaborated by the neo-Platonists in the 3rd century and was given considerable vogue in the 18th century by Swedenborg. In the 19th century there developed the idea that this ‘other world’ was attainable, not through religious faith or mysticism, but, as Baudelaire expressed it in Notes nouvelles sur Edgar Poe, ‘a travers la poesie.’ Through poetry the soul perceives ‘les splendeurs situees derriere le tombeau.’
Baudelaire and his followers created the image of the poet as a kind of seer (q.v.) or voyant, who could see through and beyond the real world to the world of ideal forms and essences. Thus the task of the poet was to create this ‘other world’ by suggestion and symbolism; by transforming reality into a greater and more permanent reality.
The attainment, in transcendental symbolism, of the vision of the essential Idea was to be achieved by a kind of deliberate obfuscation of blurring of reality so that the ideal becomes clearer. This, according to symbolist theory, could be best conveyed by the fusion of images and by the musical quality of the verse; by, in short, a form of so-called pure poetry (q.v.). The music of the words provided the requisite element of suggestiveness, Verlaine, in his poem Art poetique (1874), for instance, says that verse must possess this musical quality ‘avant toute chose.’ Such a point of view was also expressed, in other words, by Mallarme, Valery and Rimbaud.
Theory and practice led the French symbolist poets to believe that the evocativeness and suggestiveness could best be obtained by verse forms that were not too rigid. Hence verse liberes and vers libres (qq.v). Rimbaud and Mallarme were the main experimenters in these forms; Rimbaud the chief practitioner of the ‘prose poem’ (q.v.). Such verse enable the poet to achieve what Valery described as ‘cette hesitation prolongee entre le son et le sens.’
The definitive manifesto of symbolism was published in September 1886 in an article in Le Figaro by Jean Moreas, contending that romanticism, naturalism and the movement of les Parnassiens were over and that henceforth symbolic poetry ‘cherche a vetir l’idee d’une forme sensible.. Moreas founded the Symbolist School whose progenitors were Baudelaire, Mallarme, Verlaine and Rimbaud; and whose disciples were, among others, Rene Ghil, Stuart Merrill, Francis Viele-Griffin and Gustave Khan.
Some of the major symbolists poems by Baudelaire are Les Correspondences, Harmonie du Soir Spleen, La Chevelure, L’Invitation un voyage, Benediction, Au lecteur, Moesta et Errabunda, Elevation, Les Sept Viellards, Le Voyage, Le Cygne. His main work is the collection known as Le Fleurs du mal (1857).
From Verlaine’s work one should mention Poemes saturniens (1866), Fetes galantes (1869), La Bonne Chanson (1872), Romances sans paroles (1874) and Sagesse (1881). From Rimbaud Le Bateau (1871), Une saison en enfer (1873) and Les Illuminations (1886). From Mallarme, these poems particularly: Apparition, Les Fenetres, Sonnet allegorique de lui-meme, Se spurs ongles, Un coup de des, Grand oeuvre. His main collection is Poesies (1887).
These poets were later to influence the work of Valery very considerably, as can be seen for a study of Le Cimetiere marin, L’Abeille, Le Rameur, Palme, Les Grenades, Le Jeune Parque and in various poems in the collection Charmes (1922).
Other influences of symbolist theory and practice are discernible in Lautreamont’s prose poem Chants de Maldoror (1868-1869), in several works by Laforgue, in a number of plays by Villiers de l’Isle Adam, Maurice Maeterlinck and Claudel, in J-K Huysmans’s novel A rebours (1884), and, most of all, in Proust’s A la recherché du temps perdu (1913-1927).
The main ‘heirs’ of the symbolist movements outside France are W.B. Yeats, the Imagist group of English and American poets (especially T.E. Hulme and Ezra Pound), and T.S. Eliot; and, in Germany, Rainer Maria Rilke and Stefan George. The ideas of the French symbolists were also adopted by Russian writers in the 1870s and the early years of the 20th century; notably by Bryusov, Volynsky and Bely. See also ALLEGORY; CORRESPONDENCE OF THE ARTS; IMAGERY; IMAGISTS; IMPRESSIONISM; METONYMY; PARNASSIANS; PRIMITIVISM; SUGGESTION; SYMBOLIC ACTION; SYNECDOCHE; TROPE.”
Excerpted from: Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. New York: Penguin, 1992.
“Novel (noun): A work of prose fiction, usually an extended narrative but often idiosyncratic in structure, that tells a story or uses incident and setting to dramatize human experience and individual character, whether through imagination, re-creation of real-life existence, intricate or rich plot, the author’s particular vision or persona, or all of these; the genre of this type of prose writing. Adjective: novelistic; adverb: novelistically; verb: novelize.
‘At this late date—partly due to the New Journalism itself—it’s hard to explain what an American dream the ideas or writing a novel in the 1940s, the 1950s, and right into the early 1960s. The Novel was no mere literary form. It was a psychological phenomenon. It was a cortical fever. It belonged in the glossary to A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis, somewhere between Narcissism and Obsessional Neuroses.’”
Tom Wolfe, The New Journalism
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
 | A Measurement Conver… on An Elegantly Simple Cooking Co… |
| A Measurement Conver… on The Weekly Text, October 25, 2… |
 | markstextterminal on Cree |
 | panzer046a139293db on Cree |
| markstextterminal on Cree |
Mark's Text Terminal 
You must be logged in to post a comment.