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Usage:

...single breath, like can be used as an adjective, adverb, noun and verb. In Harvard-speak, "to be like" and "to go" are perfectly acceptable alternatives to the verb "to say." What exactly does it mean when one says, "He went like...

Author: By Beth L. Pinsker, | Title: Deconstructing Harvard-Speak | 10/27/1990 | See Source »

...slang, including at least 50 words for the act of imbibing and the condition of intoxication, not to mention about 100 more words to describe the regurgitation that follows. Even the word party, which most of us grew up thinking was a noun meaning "celebration," is now a euphemistic verb for "to drink...

Author: By Beth L. Pinsker, | Title: Deconstructing Harvard-Speak | 10/27/1990 | See Source »

...Zeugma" is a literary device in which a single verb modifies two distinct objects that do not belong together--as, for example in the following passage from Alexander Pope's "The Rape of the Lock...

Author: By Molly B. Confer, | Title: Not Just Any Tom, Dick or Harry | 10/17/1990 | See Source »

Although German prose styles tend toward relative sparseness these days, a sentence can still stretch on 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...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Germany: And Now for Sprachvergnugen | 7/9/1990 | See Source »

...that are spelled alike and mean the same thing -- for example, person, winter and arm. Plenty of words have only slight differences: if you're nervous in English, you're nervos in German. With a little imagination, one can find any number of common roots. Take, for example, the verb to smell: riechen, from the same root as the English reeks. The malodorousness does not exist in the German word, but the odor does...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Germany: And Now for Sprachvergnugen | 7/9/1990 | See Source »

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