Word: penmen
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...investigate the current state of these fine old sins, London's Sunday Times recently commissioned essays on them from a septet of England's wiliest, wittiest penmen. Nontheologians all, the Sunday Times sin samplers range from longtime agnostic and Critic Cyril Connolly, whose report on covetousness is a jaunty little tale of how a greedy antique collector comes to a Bad End, to Roman Catholic Poetess Dame Edith Sitwell, who rather admired the sin assigned to her. "Pride may be my own besetting sin," she wrote, "but it is also my besetting virtue. Certainly my life has been...
...machines are designed to thwart slipshod penmen and student impersonators, according to Foster M. Palmer, associate librarian for research and circulation...
...born, says Stearn-who borrowed his explanations from a 17th century French scholar-the ancient Greeks gave human qualities to the planets. Mars, the red planet, was considered male, and the Greek word for Mars, Thouros, was abbreviated to "Th," or α. In the hands of careless and hasty penmen, this symbol eventually degenerated into δ. The same shorthand fate overtook the female planet, Venus, whose Greek name Phosphorus was reduced to Ph (Φ) and subsequently-perhaps by the same careless Grecians-to ø. When medieval alchemists came upon these symbols, they found them useful: δ (Mars) was associated with...