Word: idioms
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Catchwords and phrases from Li'l Abner such as "amoozin but confoozin," "as any fool can plainly see," "natcherly" and both "sob" and "gulp" used as spoken expletives, have become immovably anchored in American idiom. His Shmoos and Kigmies are as easily identifiable to most Americans as cantaloupes and cows...
...turned him loose. For twelve years, while Elinor bore children,-Frost raised chickens, taught school, battled the grudging soil, fought back encroaching witch grass and sheep laurel. Working long after the children were in bed and the chores done, he slowly wrung out a lean, spare and personal idiom...
...poets who helped form the idiom spoke with classical tongues. He read Theocritus and Vergil, Horace and Catullus. (In any possible hereafter, says Frost, he would like most to dine with Theocritus). Keats and Shelley were uncongenially flowery. He learned the dramatic lyric from Browning, decided that what he wanted was "the speaking tone of voice somehow entangled in the words." He set himself such exercises...
Information Service has come to life, enthusiastically launching a new effort to communicate with the common folk of Formosa in their own idiom...
...heard the second concert in the festival's survey. The audience was lulled into false security with some Haydn and Mozart quartets, then given the business: Walter Piston's new (1949) piano quintet, with Harris' wife Johana ("Lady Jo") at the piano. Written in modern idiom, with awkward, angular intervals, grating harmonies and jolting semi-jazz rhythms, it left its listeners bewildered and politely awed. When it was over, the audience stood up (applause in the chapel was ruled out) to show its reverent appreciation...