Word: noun
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...well beyond the patience of the English speaker. One may be left exhausted and bewildered after navigating through cascades of clauses that lead to the elusive verb at the very end that explains everything. For sheer frustration, however, little compares with the task of remembering what gender each noun is and hence whether a der (masculine), die (feminine) or das (neuter) needs to be affixed in front of it. And then, of course, there are the declensions...
...raped child. Why are "incest" and "sexual abuse" always in categories separate from "rape"? "Incest" is a noun, not a verb; there's no such thing as "to incest," and the victim and agent of incest are indistinguishable "committers of incest." "Committing incest" in our language is conceived as merely a violation of the accepted law and morality, not of the privacy of a woman's or child's body...
Words flutter in his air like seabirds. Tern. There's a word. A noun. The Captain adores all nouns, proper and improper. A proper noun is a metaphor, observes the Captain, feeling very much the master of his bark. Bark! Noun- verb. Verbs are the best. Bray. Loop. Whir. In his captain's chair, the Captain sits every morning, pen in hand, happy as a clam, happier than any fisherman casting for trout. Trout! Is this the life? Captain Midlife asks unrhetorically, gazing about him with an astonishingly stupid grin...
Even strategists who doubt Caddell's formulation that a political party, like a French noun, can connote gender, concede that the Democrats must strive to convey toughness if they are to attract the defectors and younger men who contributed heavily to both Reagan landslides. Pollster Stanley Greenberg, after studying switch voters, points out, "Younger voters, even more than others, respond strongly to candidates who seem determined to pursue clear goals -- regardless of what those goals are." It worked for Reagan and for Oliver North...
...Birding. Noun (neologism). Dynamic, addictive and highly contagious behavior combining hunting skills, aesthetic delight, intellectual analysis and the dreamy withdrawal from normal life, especially during spring migration...