Word: verbs
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...conscientious a historian to duck any ugliness that must out. Young Washington is proof enough of that. He himself is aware that the first two volumes add few cubits to George Washington's stature. In the Virginia of Washington's day, writes Dr. Freeman, "One verb told the story . . . grab, grab, grab." Washington's father and grandfather had been successful grabbers in a relatively small way. Father Augustine (he was called Gus) could afford to send two of his sons to school in England, though George got his meager schooling at home. When he died...
Petelka's vocabulary starts with personal pronouns: I is 1; you, 2; he, 3; she, 4. Adding X to the word-number makes a plural (man is 330, men is 330X). There are no articles, conjugations of verbs or declensions of nouns (except for the possessive case). Parts of speech are indicated by zeroes (democracy, the noun, is 8730; democratize, the verb, 87300; democratic, the adjective, 873000; democratically, the adverb, 8730000). Says Petelka...
Before Petelka can sell linguists on his system, he will have to clear up several points. Among them: 1) What would his system do about homonyms-words with several different meanings (run has 41 separate meanings as a noun, 49 as a verb, five as an adjective)? 2) What number would make democracy mean the same thing to an American and a Russian...
...judge by its content, the typical British reader of the weekly Spectator is a staid, orderly man who carries an umbrella on threatening days, and whose wife has the vicar to tea in the garden. He is likely to say "verb. sap." when he means "a word to the wise," and if he says, "I rather think I shall go sailing tomorrow, D.V.," everyone knows that he means "Deo volente" (God willing...
...socialist New Statesman and Nation conducts weekly "competitions" in epigrams, limericks, etc. Recently readers were asked to play a game originated by Philosopher Bertrand Russell. On BBC's Brains Trust program (Britain's sprightly Town Meeting of the Air), he had humorously conjugated an "irregular verb" as "I am firm; you are obstinate; he is a pig-headed fool...