Word: archaicism
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...possible First Ladies. The winner of the contest for the past four elections has gone on to be (or continued to be) the First Lady. This year, Cindy McCain's Oatmeal-Butterscotch cookies beat out Michelle Obama's shortbread cookies. A cookie contest for our First Lady? Archaic? Ridiculous? Well then, how 'bout a dance-off between the candidates themselves? This virtual throwdown between John McCain and Barack Obama should at least take your mind off the 1950s flashback with a little bit of crumpin', twirling and fancy footwork...
...dead” languages, their usefulness is not similarly consigned to the past. The fact that they have ceased evolving, like “living” languages continue to do, endows them with an unchangeable grammar and syntax, impervious to innovation. Mastering the nuances of archaic constructions and a catalogue of rules and their innumerable exceptions calls for patience, persistence, and an analytical mind—all qualities that behoove a student of any discipline.In literature and poetry, the classical languages have left an unmistakable influence on subsequent traditions. Readings of Shakespeare or Corneille or even Beckett are deeper...
...society in a way that both innocently mocks and pointedly slanders. Maher succeeds, probing into old wounds that refuse to heal. An anthropological affront, “Religulous” reminds us that religion looks a lot like mental illness, and even more like a blind call to an archaic battle...
...feminists examining muliebrity (the condition of being a woman), or soothsayers putting out their latest vaticination (prophecy), the available lexicon may soon get slimmer. The lexicographers behind Britain's Collins English Dictionary have decided to exuviate (shed) rarely used and archaic words as part of an abstergent (cleansing) process to make room for up to 2,000 new entries. "We want the dictionary to be a reflection of English as it is currently spoken," says Ian Brookes, managing editor of Collins, "rather than a fossilized version of the language...
...about branding Bolshevism as a Jewish plot against the Russian people. This bigotry culminated in his last book, “Two Hundred Years Together,” an embittered examination of the relationship between Russians and Jews—the very dichotomy of its premise reeks of an archaic racial chauvinism. His invectives against the spiritual emptiness of western culture, which he pitted against the fabled purity of the Russian soul, are familiar bromides of Russia’s national mythology, but they barely concealed his contempt for the “atheistic” values of liberal democracy...