Word: phrasing
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1880-1880
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...This is a comparatively easy matter. Another important point is the use of figurative language. To their reluctance to use more than one or two figures of speech in the same line may be attributed the bare, prosaic nature of the English poets, - notably Shakspeare and Tennyson. The celebrated phrase "To take arms against a sea of troubles," which some have ignorantly criticised, is still far below the Harvard standard. A Harvard poet would have written, "To gather arms," or "To reap arms." The following lines deserve to take rank among the finest in the language...
...right, but I think very few undergraduates at present would know what it meant, and it is not to be found in Hall's "College Words and Customs," published here in 1856. Now, as Mr. Black himself says, "The college vocabulary is very slowly enlarged, . . . but once let a phrase become firmly established, and it is immortal." Such a convenient general word would scarcely have had time to spring up and die since 1856. The best of our original words is doggy, a very expressive term, which - with the noun dog, derived from it - is almost unknown out of Cambridge...
...word mucker applies only to persons not in college. The collegiate rowdy is known as a scrub, which I think is another word originated here, though undoubtedly drawn from English sources. At Columbia a scrub is dubbed a ploot, a prune, or a plum. At Yale a peculiarly suggestive phrase, slum, is general...