Despite its explicit program, when the symphony was first performed in 1957 a Russian audience
always on the lookout for subtexts quickly interpreted it as being about the crushed Hungarian
uprising of the previous year. This officially sanctioned work of agitprop was read as an
encrypted denunciation of the Soviet regime.
-- Justin Davidson, "Musical Explosions, Moving and Martial", Newsday, May 22, 1999
The essay was a farewell to the men of the left, a brilliant, impassioned piece of agitprop that
galvanized women in communes, bookstores, hippie coffee houses and underground newspaper
offices all over the country.
-- "Memoirs by women writers get personal with a host of issues, from politics to pregnancy to
parent care", Washington Post, January 14, 2001
Neither writer offers a shred of evidence for her claims, which makes these books second-rate
agitprop rather than "first-rate sociology."
-- Kim Phillips-Fein, "Feminine Mystiquers", The Nation, March 19, 1999
. . .nationally televised agitprop designed to appear nonpartisan while actually pushing the
ideology of the party in power.
-- Peter Beinart, "The sleazification of an American ritual", The New Republic, February 3, 1997
Joss blew out her breath, stamped her feet in a short tattoo, and sat jiggling one leg.
-- John Casey, The Half-life of Happiness
There are more golf courses per person in Naples than anywhere else in the world, and in spite of
the hot, angry weather everyone around the hotel was dressed to play, their cleated shoes
tapping out a clickety-clickety-clickety tattoo on the sidewalks.
-- Susan Orlean, The Orchid Thief
With a steady tattoo of bad news beginning to offset what had been one of the most vibrant parts
of the U.S. economy, "we are less optimistic than we were two months ago about the speed of the
bounce back," Mr. Williams said.
-- Eduardo Porter, "California's Economic Slowdown Is Expected to Last Much Longer", Wall
Street Journal, April 5, 2001
Tattoo is an alteration of earlier taptoo, from Dutch taptoe, "a tap(house)-shut," from tap, "faucet"
+ toe, "shut" -- meaning, essentially, that the tavern is about to shut.
1. Containing or conferring full power; invested with full power; as, "plenipotentiary license;
plenipotentiary ministers."
2. A person invested with full power to transact any business; especially, an ambassador or
diplomatic agent with full power to negotiate a treaty or to transact other business.
There were two accounts, one in a news article, the second in the editorial section, telling the
minihistory of Pol Pot, sometime plenipotentiary ruler of Cambodia.
-- William F. Buckley Jr., The Redhunter
At that time, Egypt was our protectorate, which meant the High Commissioner was the
plenipotentiary of George V and carried independent authority.
-- David Freeman, One of Us
A new era, Hoover called it, one that was witnessing breathtaking transformations in traditional
ways of life and that demanded commensurate transformations in the institutions and techniques
sof government.
-- David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear
It is almost a rule: the successful American--Vanderbilt, Frick, Rockefeller, Hearst, Gates--builds
himself a house commensurate with his fortune.
-- Michael Knox Beran, The Last Patrician
The Shi'a represent a plurality in Lebanon, where only in recent years they have gained a degree
of political power commensurate with their numbers.
-- Graham E. Fuller and Rend Rahim Francke, The Arab Shi'a: The Forgotten Muslims
Commensurate is from Late Latin commensuratus, from Latin com-, "with, together" + Late Latin
mensuratus, past participle of mensurare, "to measure," from Latin mensura, "measure."
And John Adams insisted that where European diplomacy was secret, bellicose, and riddled with
intrigue, American policy would be open, peaceful, and honest.
-- Walter McDougall, Promised Land, Crusader State
Cambodia struggled through five years of bloody civil conflict with the destructive intervention of
bellicose foreign powers, four years of a genocidal revolutionary regime, then liberation through
invasion and a decade of military occupation by Vietnam.
-- Henry Kamm, Cambodia: Report From a Stricken Land
Yet his undoubtedly aggressive behaviour . . . only served to further endear him to all who had
dealings with him. They recognised that behind the bellicose facade, there beat a big, warm,
compassionate heart.
-- "Big, warm heart behind bellicose facade", Irish Times, August 21, 1999
Bellicose is from Latin bellicosus, from bellicus, "of war," from bellum, "war."
Nagaraj can never bring himself to aggress or fight back, but he is capable of a delicious malice.
-- Julian Moynahan, "India of the Imagination. . .", New York Times, July 15, 1990
The hand . . . is the most versatile of organs. Through its agency we lift, pinch, squeeze, explore,
feel, learn, discriminate, repulse, caress, aggress.
-- F. Gonzalez-Crussi, "The Hand", Washington Post, July 19, 1998
A master of drawing, Rico Lebrun, discovered that "the draftsman must aggress; only by
persistent assault will the live image capitulate and give up its secret to an unrelenting line."
-- Annie Dillard, "Write Till You Drop", New York Times, May 28, 1989
Aggress is from French agresser, from Latin aggredi, aggress-, "to approach, to approach
aggressively, to attack," from ad-, "to" + gradi, "to step, to walk."
The curtains are thin, a diaphanous membrane that can't quite contain the light outside.
-- Eric Liu, The Accidental Asian
She needed more than diaphanous hope, more than I could give her.
-- Tej Rae, "One Hand Extended", Washington Post, August 12, 2001
Diaphanous ultimately derives from Greek diaphanes, "showing through," from diaphainein, "to
show through, to be transparent," from dia-, "though" + phainein, "to show, to appear." It is related
to phantom, something apparently sensed but having no physical reality.
In bed.
When I lay abed as a boy in our ranch house, listening to those trucks growl their way up
highway 281, the sound of those motors came to seem as organic as the sounds of the various
birds and animals who were apt to make noises in the night.
-- Larry McMurtry, Roads: Driving America's Great Highways
Abed is the prefix a-, "in, on" (from Old English an) + bed (from Old English bedd).
They sat there in their formal bargeman's rig . . . looking solemn: they were part of a ceremony,
and levity, winking, whispering, smiling, had no place in it.
-- Patrick O'Brian, The Hundred Days
I must say that if the doctor was indulging in levity at my expense, it is a levity I find in the worst
possible taste.
-- Alfred Alcorn, Murder in the Museum of Man
1. Of or pertaining to marriage; done or used at a wedding; as, "nuptial rites and ceremonies."
2. Of, pertaining to, or occurring in the mating season.
3. Marriage; wedding; nuptial ceremony; -- usually used in the plural.
The couple entered the town of Chalons, stopping on the way to listen to a concert (which must
have been torture for Monsieur, who had no ear for music) and then heard a nuptial blessing
from the Bishop.
-- Christine Pevitt, Philippe, Duc D'Orleans
Angela remembered vividly the mild indecorousness of the occasion -- not the usual nuptial
jollity, but an oddly irreverent atmosphere, light and ungrateful.
-- Alice Thomas Ellis, The Sin Eater
The two ducks may never approach each other again, their species' habit being to put on flashy
nuptial plumage and choose new partners every spring.
-- Mary Parker Buckles, Margins
As the bride and groom arrived, the city-issued clock registered five minutes to noon, just
moments before the chapel would close, almost ensuring that, no matter how esteemed the
couple, the nuptials would not be reported in the next day's papers.
-- Larry Tye, The Father of Spin
Nuptial comes from Latin nuptialis, from nuptiae "marriage, wedding," from the past participle of
nubere, properly, "to cover, to veil," hence, "to marry," as the head of the bride was covered with a
veil.
A tale of sorrow, disappointment, or complaint; a doleful story; also, a dolorous or angry tirade.
This age in which leisure and letters were gilded with commerce did not see the decline and fall of
art, despite the jeremiads of such artists as William Blake ('Where any view of money exists,' he
prophesied, 'art cannot be carried on').
-- Roy Porter, English Society in the Eighteenth Century
Johnson's jeremiad against what he sees as American imperialism and militarism exhaustively
catalogs decades of U.S. military misdeeds
-- Stan Crock, review of The Sorrows of Empire by Chalmers Johnson, Business Week, February
2, 2004
Economics ministers in general were taken aback when a recent World Bank report -- after a year
of jeremiads -- suggested the crisis was being exaggerated
-- Lance Castle, "The economic crisis revisited", Jakarta Post, April 1, 1999
Jeremiad comes from French jérémiade, after Jérémie, Jeremiah, the prophet.
1. To resolve (as a sentence) into its component parts of speech with an explanation of the form,
function, and syntactical relationship of each part.
2. To describe grammatically by stating its part of speech, form, and syntactical relationships in a
sentence.
3. To examine closely or analyze critically, especially by breaking up into components.
4. To make sense of; to comprehend.
5. (Computer Science) To analyze or separate (input, for example) into more easily processed
components.
6. To admit of being parsed.
We must learn to parse sentences and to analyse the grammar of our text, for, as Roman
Jakobson has taught us, there is no access to the grammar of poetry, to the nerve and sinew of
the poem, if one is blind to the poetry of grammar.
-- George Steiner, No Passion Spent: Essays 1978-1995
There are too many spots where the rhythm goes momentarily awry; where words are used with
murk, sloppiness or phonetic imprecision; where sentences are so twisted around that they
become hard to parse; even times where it's hard to be sure just who or what is being referred to.
-- Douglas Hofstadter, "What's Gained in Translation", New York Times, December 8, 1996
The American Constitution, for example, says that "Congress shall make no law abridging the
freedom of speech." . . . once we parse notions like "abridging" and "the freedom of speech,"
perhaps we will decide cases on the basis of an inquiry into two, three, or more relevant
considerations.
-- Cass R. Sunstein, Legal Reasoning and Political Conflict
Parse comes from the Latin pars (orationis), "part (of speech)."
1. Somewhat salty.
2. Distasteful; unpalatable.
Just a few villages dot the dangerous beaches where the Sepik [River] meets the sea, a brackish
zone where sharks and saltwater crocodiles lurk.
-- Dennis Lewon, "Learning to Receive", Islands
I gagged, and tasted something metallic and brackish in the back of my throat.
-- Lance Armstrong and Sally Jenkins, It's Not About the Bike
And yet his decision still leaves that brackish aftertaste.
-- Tom Block, review of The Sorrow and the Pity (1971), Culturevulture.net
Brackish derives from Dutch brak, "salty." It is especially used to describe a mixture of seawater
and fresh water.
Wearied by traveling.
The wayworn Battalions halt in the Avenue: they have, for the present, no wish so pressing as
that of shelter and rest.
-- Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution
These beautiful and verdant recesses, running through and softening the rugged mountains, were
cheering and refreshing to the wayworn travellers.
-- Washington Irving, Astoria
Wayworn is way (from Old English weg) + worn (from Old English werian).
The reality of governance was not stasis but change; institutions did not operate according to
mechanical laws, they evolved organically.
-- Jerry L. Mashaw, Greed, Chaos, and Governance
By the 1960s Colombia had settled into an enforced stasis, with Marxist guerrillas in the hills and
jungles (modern successors to the bandido tradition) and a central government increasingly
dominated by a small group of rich, elite Bogotá families, powerless to effect change and,
anyway, disinclined.
-- Mark Bowden, Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World's Greatest Outlaw
Whether trabeated, arcuated, or suspended, a structure seeks stasis by balancing forces in
tension and compression.
-- James F. O'Gorman, ABC of Architecture
Stasis comes from Greek stasis, "a standing still," from histasthai, "to stand."
Strictly attentive to the details of form in action or conduct; precise; exact in the smallest
particulars.
The convert who is more punctilious in his new faith than the lifelong communicant is a familiar
figure in Catholic lore.
-- Patrick Allit, Catholic Converts
Nicholas showed us his butterfly collection. He had done a splendid job of spreading them (better
than I ever have, let alone at his age). I tried to impress upon him the need for punctilious
labeling, a tedious business that raises a butterfly from a mere curio to a specimen of scientific
value.
-- Robert Michael Pyle, ChASINg Monarchs
Cooper had always been very punctilious about observing the rules laiddown in the . . .
brochure.
-- Josef Skvorecky, Two Murders in My Double Life
Punctilious derives from Late Latin punctillum, "a little point," from Latin punctum, "a point," from
pungere, "to prick."
1. An ambush.
2. To attack by surprise from a concealed place; to ambush.
But so great were his fears for the army, lest in those wild woods it should fall into some Indian
snare, that the moment his fever left him, he got placed on his horse, and pursued, and overtook
them the very evening before they fell into that ambuscade which he had all along dreaded.
-- Mason Locke Weems, The Life of Washington
The storm is distant, just the lights behind
The eyes are left of lightning's ambuscade.
-- Peter Porter, "The Last Wave Before the Breakwater"
No more ambuscades, no more shooting from behind trees.
-- William Murchison, "What the voters chose", Human Life Review, January 1, 1995
Ambuscade comes from Middle French embuscade, from Old Italian imboscata, from past
participle of imboscare, "to ambush," from in, (from Latin) + bosco, "forest," of Germanic origin.
Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, two very different men, each from a different party, were
seen as mendacious and deceitful, driven to self-destructive actions by forces they could not
control.
-- Robert Shogan, The Double-Edged Sword
His writings, speeches, and decisions supply crucial evidence but also contain mendacious
elements, gaps, and camouflage.
-- Richard Breitman, Official Secrets
This was, then, not merely the official closing statement of a lost war, but the opening
pronunciamento of an urgent campaign to maintain imperial control as well as social and
political stability in a shattered nation.
-- John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II
The general secretary issued a pronunciamento, in which traditional clotted cliches somehow
turned into a kind of poetry, both majestic and absurd.
-- Peter Simple, "Comment: Lost", Daily Telegraph, September 10, 1999
It was said of her, by a man given to such pronunciamentos, that " in conversation she had
more wit than any other person, male or female."
-- Jonathan Yardley, "Ladies of the Grand Tour", Washington Post, December 16, 2001
Pronunciamento comes from Spanish pronunciamiento, from pronunciar, "to pronounce," from
Latin pronuntiare, from pro-, "forth" + nuntiare, "to announce," from nuntius, "messenger."
Mr. Hersey thus became Mr. Lewis's summertime factotum, copying pages of a play that Lewis
was writing about Communism.
-- Richard Severo, "John Hersey, Author of 'Hiroshima,' Is Dead at 78", New York Times, March
25, 1993
She is a blind, paraplegic forensic hypnotist, and he is her brother and general factotum.
-- Newgate Callendar, "Spies & Thrillers", New York Times, July 31, 1994
Factotum is from Medieval Latin, from Latin fac totum, "do everything," from facere, "to do" +
totus, "all."
The body politic produces noisome and unseemly substances, among which are politicians.
-- P. J. O'Rourke, "No Apparent Motive", The Atlantic, November 2002
The first flower to bloom in this latitude, when the winter frost loosens its grip upon the sod, is not
the fragrant arbutus, nor the delicate hepatica, nor the waxen bloodroot, as the poets would have
us think, but the gross, uncouth, and noisome skunk cabbage.
-- Alvan F. Sanborn, "New York After Paris", The Atlantic, October 1906
The most dangerous season was after the rice and indigo harvests in August and September
when the waters were 'low, stagnant and corrupt' and the air made noisome with indigo plants
hauled out of the water and left to rot in the fields.
-- Ronald Rees, "Under the weather: climate and disease, 1700-1900", History Today, January
1996
Noisome is from Middle English noysome, from noy, "harm," short for anoy, from Old French,
from anoier, "to annoy."
He considered education "the great panacea" and insisted that access to knowledge was the key
to all social progress.
-- Diane Ravitch, Left Back
I do not want to overstate the benefits of dialogue. Though I believe it sometimes has almost
magical properties, it is not a panacea for all the problems that ail us.
-- Daniel Yankelovich, The Magic of Dialogue
Technology had become a panacea for the great economic, social, and political challenges facing
the nation as it embarked on the path of modernization.
-- Paul R. Josephson, Red Atom
Panacea derives from Greek panakeia, from panakes, "all-healing," from pan-, "all" + akos,
"cure."
Abrogate derives from Latin abrogare, "to repeal a law wholly, to annul," from ab-, "away from" +
rogare, "to ask, to inquire, to question; also, to propose a law."