Word: inert
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Lambuth despised inert verbs: "To be is the weakest of all verbs because it merely joins two ideas together with a colorless glue." He liked verbs that are "busy doing or making something." Not When Elizabeth was queen, but When Elizabeth reigned. He sought concrete words standing for "material things which may be seen, touched, tasted, smelled or heard." No Lambuth student could write that a man indulged in an act of generosity; he wrote that a man gave a dollar to a tramp. Abstract: He gave vehement and conclusive expression to his anger. Concrete: His fist landed squarely...
Brains, beards, civil rights, silly riots and sex-such is the confusing image of this year's U.S. collegian. His mind delights; his morals dismay. He is something new: a cross between the inert "apathetes" of the late '50s and the naive activists of the early '60s. He might be called a "personalist"-one who stresses self-development-and he sounds like this...
...much more rewarding than spearing them. Another major factor has been the jet age, which has brought the coral reefs of Fiji and other faraway sources of exotic fish within a few hours of the U.S. This shorter travel time, plus new sleep drugs which make fish inert, thus reducing their oxygen intake by two-thirds, means that more fish can be transported in less water-and hence sold more cheaply...
...League may well be the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. For decades, this ivy masked a nagging inferiority complex. Outsiders mistook Penn for a state university; insiders yearned to rename it Franklin after Ben, its patron. Though blessed with great graduate schools, Penn was cursed with inert trustees, inept presidents and indolent rejects from Yale and Harvard. "The plaything of the Main Line," Penn dreamed of past glory while dying of the slums that choked its campus and strangled its spirit...
...Hofmann then synthesized an eleven-acid segment and joined it with the rest of the enzyme. This substance proved wholly inert. Apparently amino acids Nos. 12 and 13 that he had just eliminated are at the "active site" of the enzyme, like the cutting tool of a lathe...