Word: verbalism
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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University officials were still in the dark yesterday as to what Harvard planned to do with the property presently owned by Boston University at Sargent College and evaluated at over $150,000. The Administration Wednesday confirmed a "verbal agreement" to buy the land and buildings when B.U. moves its physical education affiliate to Boston...
What they may mean is that the verbal juggling of ideas tyrannizes the sensations which might give them relevance, and creates, if anything, a false framework of taught knowledge that obscures knowing. When somebody "knows too much," it is often this: he knows too much that doesn't matter to him, that makes it harder for him to see what does matter...
...favorite pastimes is verbal fencing with the village postmaster and storekeeper, a quick wit and warm-souled man who longs during baking July noons for crisp October dawns at the remote Lake St. John, where he makes his annual duck-hunting excursion. His work seems like play to most people because he has a good time with almost everyone, gently ribbing arrogant, hurried visitors, facetiously stalling intent and flashy wholesalers' "drummers." His laugh sounds more like a caw of a crow than anything else, and there's usually something--whether it's the Red Sox, the "Com'unists," or lazy...
...this is probably for the best, because by leaving gaping holes in their arguments, by failing to document assertions of dubious validity, or making assertions totally incapable of such documentation, by committing themselves to logical and verbal inconsistencies, the authors have made response on an undergraduate level quite likely. A smoothly executed series of analytic studies would have effectively curbed the students' desire to either read or respond to the articles, and would have made the magazine's becoming an accepted mechanism for exploring or asserting belief extremely unlikely. While a plea for badness is not easy to support...
...razor-edged, wit-propelled story generally galloping at such speed as to make its fantastic pile-up of catastrophes almost as hilarious as they are horrifying. Converting Candide into a "comic operetta" is perforce a major operation. For the whizzing variety of incident must be duplicated by musical, visual, verbal, choreographic variety of treatment. Seldom, thanks to Scene Designer Oliver Smith and Costume Designer Irene Sharaff, has calamity been more glowingly or sumptuously caparisoned; such things as the stage set of Lisbon and the Guardi-like Venetian figures are superb. And seldom has so complicated a show received such expert...