Word: verbalism
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...that their source and meaning puzzled the Indians themselves. Clipped and pummeled into pronounceable shape by Spaniards, Frenchmen, Russians, Harvardmen, gold miners, railroad presidents and sentimental poets, they ended up as much Greek as Indian. In fact, they were American-the first ingots from the great U.S. verbal melting pot that put the second "C" in Connecticut (no one knows who did, or why), made Wyoming out of Mecheweami-ing, Oregon out of Ouiscon-sink (though some Irish patriots still insist that O'Reagan is the obvious source), Laughing Waters out of the onomatopoetic Minne-baba...
Dorothy Parker, bang-browed verbal bangster, of late more preoccupied with causes than with her famed encaustics, mused: "Committee meetings poison my life. They're mainly lots of people sitting around with their heads in their hands. Then somebody finally says, 'Doesn't any body know Baruch...
...that winds up as a kind of fault, because the play resorts to outside enlightenment rather than selfrevelation; it tells rather than shows. The result is more like a solved cryptogram than a thing of flesh & blood. But, if not a satisfying experience, The Deep Mrs. Sykes, with its verbal claws and vivid theater, is very often a stimulating...
...several weeks, said Editor Thackrey, he had given her "space for her verbal tears of compassion for the ordinary Germans," although her views were "repugnant." Now Editor Thackrey baldly questioned her credentials as an expert: "Miss Thompson persuaded us once before . . . that Hitlerism would never be accepted by the German people...
...association with Nat Goldstone) was a roaring hit before it ever opened. Even after the superlatives have settled and the hats have dropped from the air, it remains a superior musical. A shiny period piece, it has approached its job with talent and invested a fortune with taste. Verbal comedy aside, it is an unusually well-rounded show-good music, likable lyrics, attractive dancing, engaging performers, stylish sets, gorgeous costumes, not too awful a book. The one defect of such virtue is that by keeping to its sunny plateaus, Bloomer Girl never scales any peaks...