Word: websterian
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Moby got heated up over the sight of Petkevich: Petkevich was very insulted and protested. "Ish male. Call me Ish male." Heimert poured water on Moby's heated Websterian brow. The water splashed on the ice, and Petkevich complained that pouring water on the ice only made the ice colder. And it was too cool already. In the end, Heimert had such difficulty getting his overeager Moby Zamboni out of the rink that he had to back...
Belonging to that unhappy second category Paul Schmidt's production screws around a lot, and most of it is pretty second-rate. Shakespeare's vicious savage, often Websterian tragedy is, for God's sake, not the lightweight collection of ideas on this stage, and when the play does assume characteristics of the darkest and most destructive comedy (as the program notes fashionably term the entire play) in the last few scenes, Schmidt reverses the entire style of his own production to heavy and symbolic drama, groping I presume for an ending via sudden spurts of electronic music and taped dialogue...
...sense of stature seems to deepen Humphrey, make him more untouchables. Always deserving of our applause, now he seems to demand our respect. And if his new awareness does not congeal into Websterian pomposity, we may have a national figure who will lead not only with his mind but with his manner...
Webster is a moldy fig. For all its scholarship, the supposedly unabridged dictionary (600,000 entries) gives hardly a hint that the American language is in the grip of a permanent revolution. The Websterian ideal of language as a careful garden of hardy perennials and occasional exotics, cultivated by a corps of devoted lexicographers, is consistently challenged by a weedy invasion of the vulgate. Professors may still protest, but the public -and most authorities-tends to silence them. Says one philologist: "It was once thought that most slang came from the underworld, but nowadays a great deal of it comes...
Ratcliffe is "a great ponderous man, over six feet high, very . . . dignified," with "rather good features" and a bald Websterian head. "A single glance at Mr. Ratcliffe's face showed Madeleine that she need not be afraid of flattering too grossly; her own self-respect, not his, was the only restraint..." Accordingly, she remarked with "apparent simplicity": "Was I right in thinking that you have a strong resemblance to Daniel Webster in your way of speaking...