Word: chapman
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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EDITOR: ROBERT L. CHAPMAN...
...fourth edition of Roget's was published in 1977, but the English vocabulary has so ballooned since then that a fifth was necessary. At $16.95 for 325,000 words and phrases, the new Roget's is a bargain. Lexicographer Robert L. Chapman has revised and reordered many of Roget's 1,000 or so mainly abstract category headings (Existence, Relation, Quantity) and made them more accessible. To these he has added 31 new topics, including Fitness, Exercise, Substance Abuse, Space Travel, Computer Science and the Environment (listing more than 100 pollutants), though some of these are rearrangements and expansions derived...
...Chapman has further simplified the quest for the precise word by placing certain terms in useful vertical order, rather than running them in dense paragraphs. Thus about 150 manias, in riveting variety, are listed both by subject (railroad travel: siderodromomania; crossing bridges: gephyromania) and by name (trichorrhexomania: pinching off one's hair; typomania: writing for publication). Similarly organized is a catalog of more than 200 phobias, which only begins to suggest why psychiatrists will never lack for patients. Fear of the Pope is papaphobia; fear of failure, kakorraphiaphobia; fear of the flute, aulophobia...
FANS OFTEN PROTEST WHEN PERFORMERS move away from the sounds that made them popular. Well, TRACY CHAPMAN loyalists can't make that complaint. Even though she invited hard rockers like Vernon Reid, lead guitarist for Living Colour, to play on her latest album, Matters of the Heart, Chapman has barely moved an inch since her Grammy-winning debut four years ago. There is some good work on this new album, including Bang Bang Bang, a biting commentary on the causes of youth violence. Chapman's rich contralto remains as hauntingly effective as ever. But there is a relentless sameness about...
...maturation and growth as a vocalist. Paradoxically, even though it marks a departure for the singer, the song is characteristic of Tikaram--her willingness to explore, to take risks and test herself as a performer, instead of just sticking to a standard success formula as artists like Tracy Chapman and Debbie Gibson have done. Perhaps this willingness to experiment explains why she continues to work with Mark Isham, with whom she collaborated on the song" Men And Women...