Word: understanding
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...promise to his farm audience that support prices would be maintained, Dewey attempted no detailed outline of his program, shrewdly contented himself with general pledges which friends wanted to hear and enemies would find difficult to attack. He promised a foreign policy "made effective by men & women who really understand the nature of the threat to peace and who have the vigor, the knowledge, and the experience required to wage peace successfully." He promised an administration "made up of men & women whose love of their country comes ahead of every other consideration." Cried Dewey: "I pledge to you that...
This week, as another autumn moon lit up the traditional festival, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek summoned his countrymen to rise against another kind of Tartar in the national household. "We should understand," he cried in a broadcast to the people, "that in addition to the treacherous rebels who are rampant today, speculation, manipulation and high living to the point of lasciviousness on the part of social parasites in our midst are also to blame for our crisis ... It is my intention to wash away these social dregs by opening the floodgates of public conscience and social justice...
Manhattan's tabloid News educates more people-and knows it-than any college in the country. For one thing, its single editorial column is written in a hoarse, impudent lingo that every one of its readers (2,275,000 on weekdays and 4,375,000 on Sundays) can understand. One day this week the News's editorial headline bazooed: IT AIN'T THE LENGTH, IT'S THE OBSCURITY. The News was barking in sidewalk scholars for a two-minute lesson on the use of the English language...
...illustration, here are some shorties which we'd call real $7 words, and wouldn't use here at this time without explanation: adit, erg, ergo, ohm, gloze, cozen, griff, modal, mure, snash, viable." On the other hand, the News thought that most of its readers would understand fairly longish ones like "intolerable" (though "unbearable" was better), or "incompatibility" (because of divorce cases), or "vulnerable" (because of bridge being so popular). The News conceded that it should have explained "genocide...
...real object of the kind of language the News believes in, said the editorial, is to say things so the public can understand them at a glance, "without having to go grubbing into a dictionary to find out what in the blue blazes you are trying...