Word: compendium
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...past 182 years, Britons have engaged in a strange vernal rite. Armed with a strong reading glass and a stronger curiosity, they amble attentively through the scarlet-and-gold-bound thickets of Debrett's Peerage, Baronetage, Knightage & Companionage, the annual compendium of who's who in the British aristocracy. The sport is more sedentary than bird watching, but the discoveries can be just as fascinating. Take this year's 6-lb., 3,202-page edition, which made its appearance last week...
...manageable test of conduct rather than thought. At issue in the Ginzburg case were Eros, whose chef-d'oeuvre in the disputed edition was a color portfolio of a white woman and Negro man, both naked, in multiple embraces; Liaison, a sex-front "newsletter" that was a compendium of sex jokes; and The Housewife's Handbook on Selective Promiscuity, a Tucson woman's clinical account of her increased pleasure with unconventional sex techniques...
That masterly compendium of Anglicanism's faith and worship, the Book of Common Prayer, has long been one of the glories of the English language. Last week Queen Elizabeth II gave her royal assent to use of a new Psalter in church worship-one step in the first major revision of the Prayer Book in 300 years...
...most of his life, Keynes wrote, wrote, wrote. He was so prolific that a compendium of his books, tracts and essays fills 22 pages. In succession he wrote books about mathematical probability (1921), the gold standard and monetary reform (1923), and the causes of business cycles (1930); each of his works further developed his economic thinking. Then he bundled his major theories into his magnum opus, The General Theory, published in 1936. It is an uneven and ill-organized book, as difficult as Deuteronomy and open to almost as many interpretations. Yet for all its faults...
LANGUAGE ON VACATION, by Dmitri A. Borgmann. The author is a word fanatic of the most ingenious order, producing a compendium of resolutely useless, teasingly fascinating information about anagrams, antigrams, palindromes. How many people can look at Satan and see Santa...