Word: verbalism
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Verbal Ectoplasm. "He is vigorously welcomed at the station by an earnest, crew-cut platoon of giant collegiates, all chasing the butterfly culture with net, notebook, poison-bottle, pin and label, each with at least 36 terribly white teeth, and nursed away, as heavily gently as though he were an imbecile rich aunt with a short prospect of life, into a motorcar in which, for a mere 50 miles or so traveled at poet-breaking speed, he assures them of the correctness of their assumption that he is half-witted by stammering inconsequential answers in an over-British accent...
Harvard's late famed Philosopher-Mathematician Alfred North Whitehead was far from the conventional absent-minded professor, but he did have occasional verbal lapses. One day he was cautioning a student about a theory of logic. "You must take it with a grain of er . . . um ... ah ..." For almost a minute, Whitehead groped for the word, until the student suggested. "Salt. Professor...
...Wilson's bid for the New Jersey governorship in 1910, Tumulty joined Wilson's camp, became his closest political adviser. As a highly effective political balance to his scholarly chief, gregarious Joe Tumulty reveled in political dogfights, handled White House patronage, but was never noted for his verbal discretion. In 1919, when Wilson was stricken by cerebral thrombosis, Tumulty suggested that he be declared incapable of holding office and allow Vice President Thomas Marshall to take over. The two men parted; Tumulty opened a law office, wrote two autobiographical accounts of the Wilson Administration...
...middle ground Derry Griscom's "Two Dimensions of the Sea" contains a good verbal and rhythmic description of the ocean in the first verse, but falters as the second verse slips into an apostrophe to a microcosmic dream. Keith Highet wrote "And In the Comment Did I Find Charm" within a somewhat limiting rhyme and meter scheme. The poem, like Peter Junger's "Two Kings" is innocuous, but pleasant. I trust that's all the writers intended...
...playwrights have riddled their cartoonist with his own pompous, high-sounding clichés and then left him bleeding on their verbal barbed wire. King of Hearts boasts some of the funniest dialogue of the season and some fast punches to all the more inflated regions of the human anatomy. It also boasts-thanks to Walter F. Kerr's direction and the acting of a superior cast-a lively production...