Word: verbalizations
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...have, for example, the fall of art. No one, not anyone, no one at all spends any time these days on what he creates. More god damned books are made out of unedited collected speeches of semi-verbal figures of the press. Painters use unmixed primary colors bought in buckets from hardware stores. Sculptors put whatever they "discover" in the street on a pedestal and we've got " art trouve. " And rock musicians break up their groups if they don't get a recording contract five months after they start playing together...
...gone beserk. One element that is genuine, however, is Nader's reputation for putting on a good show. His victims have learned that Nader has an astounding knack of attracting publicity and using the press. He consistently loads his public statements to contain the right mixture of documentation and verbal flamboyance (in the McGovern testimony, for instance, hot dogs with a high fat content became "fatfurters-American's deadliest missiles"). In his increasingly frequent speeches and television appearances. Nader regularly emits the kind of easily graspable, shocking facts that are calculated to galvanize the lazy listeners into action...
...probably existed since the beginning of language. As long as there have been things of which men thought the less said the better, there have been better ways of saying less. In everyday conversation the euphemism is, at worst, a necessary evil; at its best, it is a handy verbal tool to avoid making enemies needlessly, or shocking friends. Language purists and the blunt-spoken may wince when a young woman at a party coyly asks for directions to "the powder room," but to most people this kind of familiar euphemism is probably no more harmful or annoying than...
...Northwestern University believes that euphemisms persist because "lying is an indispensable part of making life tolerable." It is virtuous, but a bit beside the point, to contend that lies are deplorable. So they are; but they cannot be moralized or legislated away, any more than euphemisms can be. Verbal miasma, when it deliberately obscures truth, is an offense to reason. But the inclination to speak of certain things in uncertain terms is a reminder that there will always be areas of life that humanity considers too private, or too close to feelings of guilt, to speak about directly. Like stammers...
...cars, argue with each other, assault fat ladies on the Turin buses and infuriate the Mafia by treading on its turf. Throughout, Charlie's eyes remain at half-mast; his lassitude finally lulls the crooks, the polizia-and the audience. Caine and Coward play a splendid game of verbal tennis, but by the final reel the laughs are lost in an anthology of dull and deafening car chases...