Word: verbalism
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...play is a kind of twilit allegory, a heroic drama that beats its swords into similes a work whose verbal abundance begets theatrical poverty. Brief scenes excepted, the play is most interesting where philosophically it is least so: in the first act where the situation is forged, where there is some of the clang of cloak-and-sword drama, where the words still fly upward. Thereafter, when they attempt to go inward, they suggest not a scalpel but an embroidery needle. Moreover, Fry is so unsimple with language that he can never really be complex about people. His deserter...
...author of Shadow and Substance and The White Steed, rather than showing his old mettle with the Irish tongue, offers mere bits of verbal Irish lace. Some fairly standard jokes about the Irish and the clergy take on almost the character of leitmotivs. Even most of the characters fail to come off-including Paul Lukas as the baron. There the play does not give the Devil his due: the one thing an emissary of his would most certainly not be is a crashing bore...
...Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty has neither the verbal bark nor the military bite of its European counterpart, the North Atlantic Treaty. But it is the first formal alliance against Communist aggression to link Asian powers with one another and with the West...
...Here are a few samples of the verbal bacilli we take into our bloodstreams every day with the morning paper. A blimpwich is a monster Dagwood. Traxcavators are for the farm, exercycles for the form. Mistle toes are slippers. Ranchjamas and perma-sized skijamas are what you wear to bed. You also wear antsy pants...
Last winter's verbal battle between the Western "have" coaches and the Eastern "have-nots" was resumed again this week when Minnesota's Johnny Mariucci and Michigan's Vic Heyliger took issue with Monday's statement by Dartmouth coach Eddie Jeremiah...