Word: singular
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Asked last week to comment on the controversy as to whether Southerners ever use ''you-all" in the singular,* Professor Greet said that the expression is usually collective, but sometimes resembles the French vous, as when a Negro servitor might say to a single person, with no sense of intimacy: "Kin ah call a cab fo' y'awl?" Southern-born, Professor Greet speaks with a faint accent, by no means resembles an "elocution" teacher, says: "We want to make Americans speak like Americans, not like a cross between Walter Hampden and an Englishman...
...stunted her spiritual and intellectual existence? Mr. Brooks finds the answer in the early colonial life from whence emerged both our philosophy of attainment or acquisition, and our tradition of arid spirituality. These two separate forces have worked an awful leaven in our civilization; they have produced a singular dichotomy in our national personality. Thus we have "highbrows" and "lowbrows," the former devoting themselves to a sterile, abstract kind of spirituality which has no roots in the reality of our life, and the latter running out their years in ceaseless, pointless activity, unaware that above them hangs a heaven...
...singular lack of efficiency and distinguished absence of diplomacy in the recent dognapping case. Charles R. Apted '06 of the Yard Police was requested by his commanding officers to hand in his sword, and at an impressive ceremony early this morning upon his return from New Haven was stripped of his regimentals and was reduced to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, a position he has not held since early in his career...
...split infinitive is a natural English locution found in the best writers (e. g.. Byron, Carlyle, Browning). Greek used singular verbs with neuter plural subjects: the English tendency to do the opposite is caused by psychological and linguistic forces whose subtlety and complexity Dr. McClenahan probably never dreamed of, and an arbitrary interpretation of which even a trained linguistic scientist might hesitate to attempt...
Upon Philadelphia's Board of Education last week fell that same stern gaze when Dr. McClenahan, a member since 1931, uprose to announce that the Board was "guilty of sending out illiterate reports of its own proceedings." In its published minutes he had found a split infinitive, a singular noun followed by a plural verb...