Word: philologist
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...student of regional U.S. speaking habits, McDavid himself comes from South Carolina, and he has a purpose in all this random conversation. He is helping gather material for the multi-volume Linguistic Atlas of the United States and Canada which Philologist Hans Kurath is directing from the University of Michigan. The Atlas will trace lines of speech similarities ("isoglosses") on detailed sectional maps, and will take several more years to finish. Meanwhile, research already done on McDavid's beat provides a preview of the sort of thing the atlas-makers hope to do for the whole northern continent...
...House of Lords Britain's most revered document came up for examination. As the Lords voted to lend the Lacock Abbey copy of the Great Charter to the U.S., their eye fell on a yoo-odd-year-old mistake. "Hard on the plain man" (says Philologist H. W. Fowler) but dear to the heart of many a Briton is the age-old habit of spelling it "Magna Charta" and pronouncing it "Magna Karta." Last week the Lord Chancellor invited the Lords to drop the h. They...
Henry L. Mencken appealed to a Baltimore court to restore to him his fireside social life, nocturnal rest, capacity to concentrate on his work, and general peace of mind-all gone now, said he. The thief of his serenity, deposed the editor-critic-raconteur-philologist's petition, was a dog next door who passed his life barking-a "large, powerful male dog of breed or breeds unknown to your orator." The barking, pursued Mencken, was "abnormally and extraordinarily loud, harsh, penetrating, violent, unpleasant, and distracting." He prayed that the court would compel his neighbor to take dog and bark...
...Manhattan, Barnard College's Philologist William Cabell Greet agreed with Shaw generally, but didn't think any democratic government-U.S. or British-could get anywhere against the sentiment that people attach to spelling. Said he: "If the Japanese had dictated peace, they might have been able to dictate a simplified spelling...
...folklore, rapscallion Reynard's tale has been told and retold in a score of tongues. His name, his cunning, and the basis of some of his adventures are discernible in Aesop's fables and in the Hindu myths from which those fables came. In the 19th Century, philologist and fairytale-teller Jacob Grimm republished the story with all the gusty lustiness of earlier tellings; in a politer version Goethe made an epic poem of it. No less than 27 episodes of Le Roman de Renard were penned in medieval France. The last of these formed the basis...