Word: contagion
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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WAIF & SAFE. H. L. Mencken called attention to the native U.S. talent for "reducing complex concepts to starkest abbreviations." From O.K. to K.O., Americans have long coined initial-born words. But what began as playful sport has turned into contagion and verbal smog (smoke and fog). Just to describe the new rash of alphabetease, linguists were forced to invent a new word: acronym (from the Greek akros for tip, onyma for name), which first appeared in dictionaries in 1947. Most insidious breeders are public relations experts, adept at spawning the punch word that sums up an organization, then...
...College Plan," this year's shrewdest innovation in independent study. After World War II, Wesleyan elected to stay small-and get better. It stiffened courses, doubled the faculty, lured lively outside lecturers. But "a kind of diminishing return" seemed apparent. Instead of "catching the intellectual contagion." says Butterfield, students merely became "more dutiful." Another problem: What moral right did Wesleyan have to turn away a growing flood of able applicants...