Word: verbalizations
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...language is headed toward a state of corrupt, Orwellian gibberish These writers have found a responsive audience; people obsessed with good English almost enjoy the feeling that they belong to an embattled cult. NBC Commentator Edwin Newman's Strictly Speaking, a catalogue of ugly Americanisms and verbal atrocities, was 26 weeks on the bestseller lists. A Pulitzer prizewinning writer, Jean Stafford, has been conducting a crusade of sorts against what she sees as the encroaching barbarism of inexact and fraudulent language...
...edges of silence, to a cabalistic cherishing of words-the beginning of speech being the event that marked the first step in the hominids' progress toward Shakespeare. But most of the debate about language now occurs at the opposite end of history, in today's atmosphere of verbal saturation...
...average verbal score on the national Scholastic Aptitude Tests was 473 (on a scale from 200 to 800). In 1973, the average was down 33 points...
...White House, the Congress, state capitals and city halls. In more ways than one, it has a "Calvinistic" ring. Many of the most enthusiastic practitioners of the new parsimony are what we-used to call liberals. California's Governor Jerry Brown is, like Coolidge, applauded for his verbal brevity and his fiscal austerity; Brown deprived state employees of their government-issue briefcases (to cut both expenses and paperwork) and suggested that the University of California administrators take pay cuts. Illinois' Governor Dan Walker notes with pride that he has trimmed the state payroll...
...when they start making their first twenty or thirty thousand, people stop laughing at them. Unless, of course they can capitalize on their embarrassment and go professional. Since Charlie Chaplin turned the loser into a comic classic, some of the most successful comedians hit the bigtime on verbal slapstick. You laugh at Rodney Dangerfield (if you do) because he "don't get no respect." And you chuckle at Woody Allen because he's a Jewish...