Today in History (May 24th):
1626: The Dutch West Indies Trading Co. bought the island of Manhattan from the Indians, paying with goods worth about $24.
1686: Birthdays: Polish inventor Gabriel Fahrenheit.
1743: Birthdays: French journalist and revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat.
1819: Birthdays: British Queen Victoria.
1830: Sarah Hale published the poem “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”
1844: The first U.S telegraph line was formally opened between Baltimore and Washington.
1870: Birthdays: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo.
1879: Birthdays: H.B. Reese, inventor of the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup.
1883: The Brooklyn Bridge was opened to the public, linking Brooklyn and Manhattan Island. Birthdays: Hostess and party-giver Elsa Maxwell, credited with introducing the scavenger hunt.
1914: Birthdays: Actor Lilli Palmer.
1935: The first night game in Major League Baseball was played at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. The Reds beat the Philadelphia Phillies 2-1.
1938: Birthdays: Comedian Tommy Chong of Cheech and Chong.
1941: Birthdays: Musician Bob Dylan (born Robert Zimmerman).
1943: Birthdays: Actor Gary Burghoff.
1944: Birthdays: Singer Patti LaBelle (born Patricia Louise Holte).
1945: Birthdays: Actor Priscilla Presley, former wife of Elvis Presley.
1949: Birthdays: Actor Jim Broadbent.
1953: Birthdays: Actor Alfred Molina.
1955: Birthdays: Singer Rosanne Cash.
1958: United Press and the International News Service merged, forming United Press International.
1960: Birthdays: Actor Kristin Scott Thomas.
1962: Mercury astronaut Scott Carpenter became the second American to orbit the Earth, circling it three times.
1965: Birthdays: Actor John C. Reilly.
1983: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled private religious schools that practice racial discrimination aren’t eligible for church-related tax benefits.
1987: 250,000 people jammed San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge on its 50th anniversary, temporarily flattening the arched span.
1991: Eritrea gained independence from Ethiopia.
1993: The archbishop of Guadalajara, Mexico, was killed at Guadalajara’s airport when his car was caught in a shootout between rival drug cartels.
2003: Residents of Kirkuk in northern Iraq went to the polls in what the U.S. commander of the region called the beginning of the process of democratization for the post-war country.
2007: The U.S. Congress voted to increase the minimum wage for the first time in 10 years — from $5.15 an hour to $7.25 over a three-year period.
2009: The U.S. State Department said it planned to give equal benefits, including diplomatic passports, use of medical facilities, training and travel privileges, to same-sex partners of U.S. diplomats.
2010: The FBI reported that violent crime, including murder, forcible rape, aggravated assault and robbery, showed a 5.5 percent decrease in 2009, compared to the previous year. Property crimes were down 4.9 percent.
2011: Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told a joint session of the U.S. Congress he was willing to give up parts of the Jewish homeland, primarily the West Bank, for a Palestinian state to guarantee peace.
2012: A U.N. report on the 14-month-old conflict in Syria said government forces once responded mainly to demonstrations but now faced armed, well-organized rebel groups bolstered by defectors who had joined them.
Quotes
“Life’s most urgent question is: what are you doing for others?” – Martin Luther King, Jr , civil-rights leader (1929-1968)
“Don’t have sex, man. It leads to kissing and pretty soon you have to start talking to them.” – Steve Martin
“He has the attention span of a lightning bolt.” – Robert Redford
“Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another.” – John Muir, Naturalist and explorer (1838-1914)
Elsa Maxwell (1883-1963) U.S. writer, hostess:
“A bore is a vacuum cleaner of society, sucking up everything and giving nothing. Bores are always eager to be seen talking to you.”
“Bores put you in a mental cemetery while you are still walking.”
“I don’t hate anyone. I dislike. But my dislike is the equivalent of anyone else’s hate.”
“I make enemies deliberately. They are the sauce piquante to my dish of life.”
“Serve the dinner backward, do anything-but for goodness sake, do something weird.”
“Someone said that life is a party. You join in after it’s started and leave before it’s finished.”
“Under pressure, people admit to murder, setting fire to the village church or robbing a bank, but never to being bores.”
decussate
PRONUNCIATION: (verb: di-KUHS-ayt, DEK-uh-sayt, adjective: di-KUHS-ayt, -it)
http://wordsmith.org/words/decussate.mp3
MEANING:
(verb tr.), To intersect or to cross.
(adjective)
If you are interested in business, obviously you can follow his good management skills and strategies. http://new.castillodeprincesas.com/item-6526 levitra 60 mg Even if men with bigger penis don’t prove to be very useful and can often times work healthier than drug therapy. viagra 25mg prix Kamagra canadian viagra for sale Pills are trusted and well-known among people for having long- lasting nights of copulation. Impotence is an erectile disorder new.castillodeprincesas.com free get viagra that commonly affects men. 1. Intersected or crossed in the form of an X.
2. Arranged in pairs along the stem, each pair at a right angle to the one above or below.
ETYMOLOGY: The word originated from Latin “as” (plural asses) which was a copper coin and the monetary unit in ancient Rome. The word for ten asses was decussis, from Latin decem (ten) + as (coin). Since ten is represented by X, this spawned the verb decussare, meaning to divide in the form of an X or intersect.
NOTES: Samuel Johnson, lexicographer extraordinaire, has a well-deserved reputation for his magnum opus “A Dictionary of the English Language”, but as they say, even Homer nods. He violated one of the dictums of lexicography — do not define a word using harder words than the one being defined — when he used today’s word and two other uncommon words in defining the word network: Network: Any thing reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections. And what is “reticulated”? Again, according to Johnson: Reticulated: Made of network; formed with interstitial vacuities.
USAGE: “How I wished then that my body, too, if it had to droop and shrivel, for surely everyone’s did, would furl and decussate with grace to sculpt the victory of my spirit.” – J. Nozipo Maraire; Zenzele: A Letter for My Daughter; Delta; 1997.
concupiscent
PRONUNCIATION: (kon-KYOO-pih-suhnt)
http://wordsmith.org/words/concupiscent.mp3
MEANING: (adjective), Lustful; libidinous.
ETYMOLOGY: From Latin concupiscentia, from concupiscere (to desire ardently), from con- (intensive prefix) + cupere (to desire). Earliest documented use: around 1450.
USAGE:
“The woman in the centre of the picture is a member of Gaddafi’s cohort of female bodyguards, a policy no doubt admired by the famously concupiscent Italian PM.” – The World Through a Lens; The Observer (London, UK); Jun 14, 2009.
“I doubt even Mosiuoa Lekota would wish to emulate another concupiscent ruler from times past, one Solomon, who, we are told, had 700 official wives and 300 concubines. One can only wonder how much time old King Sol had left for his official duties.” – Andrea Meeson; Cadres and Concubines a Great Show; Sunday Independent (South Africa); Apr 12, 2009.
Explore “concupiscent” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=concupiscent
silver lining
PRONUNCIATION: (SIL-vuhr LY-ning)
http://wordsmith.org/words/silver_lining.mp3
MEANING: (noun), A positive aspect in an otherwise gloomy situation.
ETYMOLOGY: From the proverb “Every cloud has a silver lining.” Earliest documented use: In John Milton’s 1637 Comus in which a lady lost in the woods says, “Was I deceiv’d, or did a sable cloud / Turn forth her silver lining on the night?” Do silver bullets have a silver lining? We’ll have to ask the Lone Ranger.
USAGE: “For critics of the cost, there is a silver lining to Abbott’s proposal.” – Carmen Michael; Rebate for Nanny Care; The Sydney Morning Herald (Australia); Mar 27, 2012.
Explore “silver lining” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=silver+lining
bagman
PRONUNCIATION: (BAG-man, BAG-muhn)
http://wordsmith.org/words/bagman.mp3
MEANING: (noun)
1. One who collects or distributes money from illicit activities, for example, in a protection racket.
2. UK: A traveling salesman.
3. Canada: A political fundraiser.
4. Australia: A tramp; swagman.
5. Golf: A caddie hired to carry a golf player’s clubs.
ETYMOLOGY: From the literal senses of the words bag and man.
USAGE:
“Andres Butron confessed to being a bagman in a drug operation, transporting cash collected in drug sales to Mexico.” – William Lee; 3 Men Found Dead; Chicago Tribune; May 19, 2010.
“Here is an account of how the hawker, the street peddler, the lowly bagman, evolved into the mighty selling and marketing gurus of today.” – Birth of a Salesman; Financial Times (London, UK); May 22, 2004.
“The party also has turned a fundraising corner with its new and energetic bagman Rocco Rossi.” – Barbara Yaffe; Struggling Ignatieff Needs Peter Donolo; The Ottawa Citizen (Canada); Nov 2, 2009.
“Anyone who wants to know just how the lot of the caddie has changed need only look at Steve Williams, Tiger Woods’s bagman. He is frequently referred to as the highest-paid sportsman in New Zealand.” – Nomadic Life Became Byrne’s Bag; Irish Times (Dublin); Nov 21, 2009.
Explore “bagman” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=bagman
This Is Not Too Good ‘of a’ Usage
Q: It drives me nuts to hear things like “It wasn’t too good of a game.” Is this usage ever correct? –Cynthia Ashworth, Granby, Conn.
A: The unnecessary “of” occurs quite often in spoken English, but all usage authorities condemn its use in formal written English. That sentence should be written as “It wasn’t too good a game.”
In a 1997 poll, 68 percent of the American Heritage Dictionary’s usage panel disapproved of the sentence “That’s too long of a movie to sit through,” (though they did say that “of a” could be excused if the movie was “Ishtar”).
So why do people continue to insert the needless “of”?
Saying “of a” seems natural because we use the phrase so often in other phrases, e.g., “sort of a problem,” “two of a kind,” “a heck of a game.” And the natural ONE-two-three stress pattern of “It WASn’t that GOOD of a “GAME” makes it easier to say than “It WASn’t that GOOD a GAME.”
Q: I was taught to say “different from.” It seems most people say “different than.” Is each correctly used in different contexts? –Donna Mottilla, Hampton, Va.
A: Yes. “Different from” is the correct phrase when comparing something to a noun (“The movie seems different from the book”), or to a noun phrase (“The movie seems different from the book in the library”) or to a gerund (“The movie seems different from reading the book”).
But when the object of comparison is expressed as a full clause, “than” is the correct choice (“The movie seems different than it did 20 years ago”).
Q: How would you treat the term “social media” (which encompasses Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc.)? “Media” is plural, so does “social media” take a plural verb, or can you think of it as a collective noun and use a singular verb? –Sue Fracasso, Kensington, Conn.
A: During the 1980s, when “media” referred to a monolithic group of established newspapers, magazines and broadcast outlets, people started using the plural “media” as a singular, e.g., “The media is obsessed with this story.” Many usage authorities condemned this as a misuse.
But now that methods of communication have diversified to include cell phones, blogs, emails and the social sites you mentioned, “media” is being used more frequently (and correctly) as a plural, as in “the social media are proliferating.”
So here’s a rare example of expanding technology actually encouraging a return to traditional correct usage!
Rob Kyff, a teacher and writer in West Hartford, Conn., invites your language sightings. Send your reports of misuse and abuse, as well as examples of good writing, via email to Wordguy@aol.com or by regular mail to Rob Kyff, Creators Syndicate, 737 3rd Street, Hermosa Beach, CA 90254
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