Word: verbes
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...instructor in journalism at a nearby girls' school in Newton, I was naturally interested in the use of the word "world" by Publisher Fox. As a former reporter for the Post, I felt impelled to write him a letter asking his authority for the plural verb with his singular noun...
...thousand Americans in Paris were using-with wry distaste-a new verb last week. The word is riffed. It means to be fired for economy, and it comes from the bureaucratic phrase Reduction In Force, the new Dulles-Stassen program to cut down expenses in the agencies that hand out U.S. aid overseas. Last June Congress directed Foreign Operations Director Harold Stassen to 1) fire 10% of the old Mutual Security Agency staff; 2) slash by a third the number of jobholders getting $12,000 a year or more...
Error 2 goes to the opposite extreme: it sidetracks grammar in favor of sight reading. But the reading is usually made too easy, e.g., texts religiously follow a single sentence structure (subject-object-verb), until students get the idea that they can identify all words by their positions. Actually, the Romans identified by endings. As far as meaning went, it made little difference to them whether a sentence read Canis puellam videt, Puellam cants videt, Canis videt puellam, Puellam videt canis, Videt canis puellam or Videt puellam canis. It all meant: "The dog sees the girl...
...elaborate craftsman, Matta deplores what he calls "the tubist painters-those who squirt paint senselessly onto canvas and those who are interested only in the verb 'to see.'" His own paintings, he insists, are not mere designs, but explorations of the verb "to be," i.e., they have to do with human existence. "I represent man," he says, "not as in a mirror, but as a force constantly changing. Man is 50% irrational. One half has been measured by mathematics; the other can be reached only through poetry...
...aulis Montezumae Tripolis ad litora . . . give me an old Springfield rifle and I'll translate word for word, identify the meter and give you the principal parts of every goddam verb, at 1,000 yards, with the peep sight up! And look-I'm not a Latin teacher, but a businessman; but I had good teachers and liked the stuff! Semper fidelisly...