Word: verb
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
True, some of the hoariest complaints about German are as applicable today as they were when Twain wrote. To the student, nouns evince an urge for unification, glutinizing into tongue-wrenching heaps of meaning, while the dreaded trennbare, or separable, verbs divide into pieces -- a kind of linguistic mitosis that leaves clumps of information floating around the sentence. Finding that truffle among words, a truly regular verb that pulls no tricks in the past perfect tense and behaves in the preterit as a preterit should, is a moment of sublime pleasure -- provided that one can remember how regular verbs...
...Their winks and nods, euphemisms and disclaimers can be translated into one stark sentence that summarizes the only truly strategic thought the U.S. Government has about the 21st century: a Germany "anchored" in NATO is less likely to cause trouble than one that is neutral and nonaligned. Note the verb, with its metaphorical suggestion not only of safety from rough seas but also of a heavy chain and benevolent captivity...
...food industry is racing to catch the microwave. Packaged products primarily designed to be hyperheated in these kitchen reactors have exploded into a more than $2 billion-a-year industry. To distinguish old-line cooking from microwave preparation, food-marketing experts are actually beginning to use "stovetop" as a verb (as in "Most Americans still stovetop dinner...
Perhaps Ted Sorensen, with his trademark verb-first, ask-not formulations, might rival Noonan as the best White House word crafter of the television age. But Sorensen writing for John Kennedy or, for that matter, Noonan composing soaring scripts for Reagan's second term had it easy. Bush was an infinitely greater challenge. In writing his 1988 G.O.P. Convention address, Noonan miraculously transformed the Bush of the stumbling syntax and clotted catch- phrases into a "quiet" leader sensitive enough to glimpse "a thousand points of light" but strong enough to say flatly, "Read my lips: no new taxes...
...first six months of the Bush Administration, agnosticism about Gorbachev was an article of faith. White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater went so far as to call him "a drugstore cowboy." Moreover, it was virtually taboo to use any form of the verb "to help" in the same sentence with Gorbachev. Senate Democratic leader George Mitchell accused the Bush Administration of "status quo thinking" and exhibiting an "almost passive stance." Bush's attitude began to change when he visited Poland and Hungary in July. His hosts impressed on him that their survival, not to mention their success, depended on Gorbachev...