Word: plaining
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Hart of Colorado. Their forceful views suggested an important conclusion: instead of a simple either/or verdict, the Senate outcome may well turn on whether amendments can be devised that will allay the doubts of skeptical Senators without wrecking ten years of negotiations with the Soviets. Perle himself made it plain that the foes of SALT are likely to use amendments as the primary way to attack the treaty, with a reopening of negotiations as the ultimate goal. A summary...
...famous 17-year cicada has nothing on the perennial goldbug. Quick-buck speculators, long-haul investors and just plain inflation-scared savers have put so much money into gold that last week it ballooned to a record $277.15 an ounce. Other precious metals have been piggybacking on the yellow stuff. Lately silver and platinum have risen even faster than gold. Predictions that gold could hit $300 an ounce by midsummer-and that other metals could rise in tandem -are becoming self-fulfilling as speculators rush to buy in anticipation of higher prices...
...compiled 16 erudite lexicons devoted to slang, cliches and other aspects of the language; his last effort, A Dictionary of Catch Phrases (1977), contained 3,000 entries. "The Word King," as Critic Edmund Wilson dubbed him, savaged linguistic abuses (he found American sociopsychological jargon especially "pitiable") and saluted plain, popular usage. Language, he said,'"was created by people, not in a laboratory...
Baker did not see himself as a humorist when he started the column, he says, and still doesn't really. His intention was "to write plain English, Anglo-Saxon root words and short sentences for readers of the Times, who were suffocating on polysyllabic, Latinate English." If he had models, he says, they were E.B. White's "Talk of the Town" pieces for The New Yorker and his mentor at the Times, James Reston. Says he: "Reston taught the Times to write English...
Russell Baker's sustaining grace as a columnist is his remarkable repertory of styles and voices. One outing he will be just plain funny, calling up chuckles out of the absurd. The next time he will be an essayist, meditating on some social turn, usually for the worst. He can be wickedly satirical, his prose a dangerously lulling parody of the sort of nonsense that passes for sober commentary in too much of the press. And finally he can be a nostalgic, almost lyrical stylist. Examples of Baker in four moods and modes...