Word: pluperfect
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...school, I loathed Latin, in general, but I detested Virgil in particular. After you'd spent hours wading through conjugations and declensions and ablative absolutes and gerunds and pasts perfect, imperfect and pluperfect, there was the pointless torture of learning and then reciting lines of dactylic hexameter about this bloke wandering aimlessly around the Mediterranean at the whim of a perpetually pissed-off goddess. I mean, even Milton was more fun than that...
...Granted, no one lands in the hospital after even the most impassioned discussions of the relative merits of indicative perfect and indicative pluperfect verb tenses. But linguistic travails do complicate cultural exchanges: when we (try to) communicate there’s a real sense of rift here, like someone’s jammed the telephone line and all that’s coming out is white noise...
...more I study, and the more easily the subjunctive pluperfect comes to me in conversation, the more I am convinced that some things just don’t translate. Exhibit A: finding an adequate Spanish counterpart for the word “jolly” (the closest we got was “bárbaro” – like “awesome,” but less painfully Californian surfer dude). Exhibit B: explaining the idiom, “to gird up one’s loins.” (My professor’s attempt...
...meet them, the Bartels (who are just a little bit too goopishly written and played) have one pluperfect daughter and are expecting what turns out to be an ideal little brother for her. Michael is a scientist doing what we understand to be socially useful research. Claire does volunteer work at the botanical gardens. Clearly they like to grow new things. At the same time, however, they have a decent respect for tradition: their house is a handsomely refurbished old place, tastefully decorated with antique mission furniture...
Being a non-politician has been helpful to many candidates, and William Weld, the pluperfect blueblood who won the Republican primary to oppose Silber in November, also played that card. His opponent, Steven Pierce, the house minority leader, matched Bellotti's shopworn look. The record turnout of Bay State voters demonstrated the public's tendency to turn on state officials with more wrath than it shows to members of Congress in troubled times. The culpability of federal lawmakers is more easily hidden. That explains why, in addition to Dukakis, nine other Governors are voluntarily retiring this year...