Word: meaningfulness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Unbeknown to an unsuspecting public, Boy George's drug troubles touched off a severe crisis in the journalese-speaking community. How should reporters and pundits, all fluent in journalese as well as English, refer to the suddenly woozy singer? Naturally enough, conventions of the language demanded a hyphenated modifier. "Much...
Some multiple modifiers in journalese have no known meaning, much like "clinically-tested" in headache-remedy advertising. Many seem to have been invented solely for their soothing rhythm: "Wide-ranging discussions" refers to any talks at all, and "award-winning journalist" to any reporter employed three or more years who...
Curran has defended his dissent on the ground that he is not contravening any infallible dogma, meaning one that is divinely protected from error. Such a teaching -- the bodily assumption of Mary into heaven, for example -- differs from what is called the ordinary magisterium, or an authoritative teaching of the...
J.P. Morgan Jr.'s private car, the Erie 400, is rolling again, partly owned by John Hankins, an attorney from Huntington, W.Va. Most private-car owners seem to be fairly affluent, though some admit to being drastically less affluent after upkeep and renovations. "Sooner or later the cost of maintaining...
So does the talk, which sometimes sounds like intelligent speech turned up to a volume of impenetrable noise. An incidental character remarks to Dale at a cocktail party, "As you know, inside the Planck length and the Planck duration you have this space-time foam where the quantum fluctuations from...