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Bloviation
Bloviation is a style of empty, pompous, political speech that originated in Ohio and was used by US President Warren G. Harding, who described it as "the art of speaking for as long as the occasion warrants, and saying nothing". His opponent, William Gibbs McAdoo, compared it to "an army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea." Origin Bloviation in Ohio was originally idle chatter. As a form of political speech, it appears in the ''Debates and Proceedings of the Convention for the Revision of the State of Ohio'' in the mid 19th century. One etymology suggests that the word is a "compound of blow, in its sense of 'to boast' (also in another typical Americanism, ''blowhard''), with a mock-Latin ending to give it the self-important stature implicit in its meaning." Gamalielese H. L. Mencken lampooned Harding's bloviate style as gamalielese, from his middle name of Gamaliel. He complained that the style was suited to Ohio yokels: In this he was respo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Verbiage
Verbosity or verboseness is speech or writing that uses more words than necessary. The opposite of verbosity is plain language. Some teachers, including the author of ''The Elements of Style'', warn against verbosity; similarly Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway, among others, famously avoid it. Synonyms include wordiness, verbiage, prolixity, grandiloquence, garrulousness, expatiation, logorrhea, sesquipedalianism, and overwriting. Etymology and synonyms The word ''verbosity'' comes from Latin language, Latin ''verbosus'', "wordy". There are many other English words that also refer to the use of excessive words. ''Prolixity'' comes from Latin ''prolixus'', "extended". ''Prolixity'' can also be used to refer to the length of a monologue or speech, especially a formal address such as a lawyer's oral argument. ''Grandiloquence'' is complex speech or writing judged to be pompous or bombastic diction. It is a combination of the Latin words ''grandis'' ("great") and ''loqui'' ("to spea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Americanism (Warren G
{{Disambiguation ...
Americanism may refer to: * American nationalism * Any characteristic feature of American English * Americanism (ideology), an early 20th-century ideology frequently posited in opposition to communism or anarchism * Americanism (heresy), a group of related beliefs supporting individualism and the separation of church and state that are regarded as heretical by the Catholic Church * "Americanism", a song by MxPx from their album ''Teenage Politics'' See also * American exceptionalism * Americanist (other) * Americanization (other) * Anti-Americanism * Comparison of American and British English * Culture of the United States * Pan-Americanism * Pro-American (other) Pro-American may refer to the following ideologies that express support for the United States, its culture, or its government: * American imperialism, a term used to describe the far-reaching cultural and political influence of the United States b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yokel
Yokel is one of several derogatory terms referring to the stereotype of unsophisticated country people. The term is of uncertain etymology and is only attributed from the early 19th century. Yokels are depicted as straightforward, simple, naïve, and easily deceived, failing to see through false pretenses. They are also depicted as talking about bucolic topics like cows, sheep, goats, wheat, alfalfa, fields, crops, and tractors to the exclusion of all else. Broadly, they are portrayed as unaware of or uninterested in the world outside their own surroundings. In the UK, yokels are traditionally depicted as wearing the old West Country/farmhand's dress of straw hat and white smock, chewing or sucking a piece of straw and carrying a pitchfork or rake, listening to "Scrumpy and Western" music. Yokels are portrayed as living in rural areas of Britain such as the West Country, East Anglia, the Yorkshire Dales and Wales. They speak with country dialects from various parts of Britai ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Public Speaking
Public speaking, also called oratory or oration, has traditionally meant the act of speaking face to face to a live audience. Today it includes any form of speaking (formally and informally) to an audience, including pre-recorded speech delivered over great distance by means of technology. Confucius, one of many scholars associated with public speaking, once taught that if a speech was considered to be a good speech, it would impact the individuals' lives whether they listened to it directly or not. His idea was that the words and actions of someone of power can influence the world. Public speaking is used for many different purposes, but usually as some mixture of teaching, persuasion, or entertaining. Each of these calls upon slightly different approaches and techniques. Public speaking was developed as a primary sphere of knowledge in Greece and Rome, where prominent thinkers codified it as a central part of rhetoric. Today, the art of public speaking has been transformed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stilted Speech
In psychiatry, stilted speech or pedantic speech is communication characterized by situationally-inappropriate formality. This formality can be expressed both through abnormal prosody as well as speech content that is "inappropriately pompous, legalistic, philosophical, or quaint". Often, such speech can act as evidence for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or a thought disorder, a common symptom in schizophrenia or schizoid personality disorder. To diagnose stilted speech, researchers have previously looked for the following characteristics: * speech conveying more information than necessary * vocabulary and grammar expected from formal writing rather than conversational speech * unneeded repetition or corrections While literal and long-winded word content is often the most identifiable feature of stilted speech, such speech often displays irregular prosody, especially in resonance. Often, the loudness, pitch, rate, and nasality of pedantic speech vary from normal speech, resulting i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Filibuster
A filibuster is a political procedure in which one or more members of a legislative body prolong debate on proposed legislation so as to delay or entirely prevent decision. It is sometimes referred to as "talking a bill to death" or "talking out a bill", and is characterized as a form of obstruction in a legislature or other decision-making body. Etymology The term "filibuster" ultimately derives from the Dutch ("freebooter", a pillaging and plundering adventurer), but the precise history of the word's borrowing into English is obscure.''Oxford English Dictionary'', "filibuster", pp. F:212–213. The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' finds its only known use in early modern English in a 1587 book describing "flibutors" who robbed supply convoys. In the late 18th century, the term was re-borrowed into English from its French form , a form that was used until the mid-19th century. The modern English form "filibuster" was borrowed in the early 1850s from the Spanish (lawless plunder ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Circumlocution
Circumlocution (also called circumduction, circumvolution, periphrasis, kenning, or ambage) is the use of an unnecessarily large number of words to express an idea. It is sometimes necessary in communication (for example, to work around lexical gaps that might otherwise lead to untranslatability), but it can also be undesirable (when an uncommon or easily misunderstood figure of speech is used). Roundabout speech is the use of many words to describe something that already has a common and concise term (for example, saying "a tool used for cutting things such as paper and hair" instead of "scissors"). Most dictionaries use circumlocution to define words. Circumlocution is often used by people with aphasia and people learning a new language, where simple terms can be paraphrased to aid learning or communication (for example, paraphrasing the word "grandfather" as "the father of one's father"). Among other usages, circumlocution can be used to construct euphemisms, innuendos, and equiv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid digital subscribers. It also is a producer of popular podcasts such as '' The Daily''. Founded in 1851 by Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones, it was initially published by Raymond, Jones & Company. The ''Times'' has won 132 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any newspaper, and has long been regarded as a national " newspaper of record". For print it is ranked 18th in the world by circulation and 3rd in the U.S. The paper is owned by the New York Times Company, which is publicly traded. It has been governed by the Sulzberger family since 1896, through a dual-class share structure after its shares became publicly traded. A. G. Sulzberger, the paper's publisher and the company's chairman, is the fifth generation of the family to head the pa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gamaliel
Gamaliel the Elder (; also spelled Gamliel; he, רַבַּן גַּמְלִיאֵל הַזָּקֵן ''Rabban Gamlīʾēl hazZāqēn''; grc-koi, Γαμαλιὴλ ὁ Πρεσβύτερος ''Gamaliēl ho Presbýteros''), or Rabban Gamaliel I, was a leading authority in the Sanhedrin in the early first century CE. He was the son of Simeon ben Hillel and grandson of the great Jewish teacher Hillel the Elder. He fathered Simeon ben Gamliel, who was named for Gamaliel's father, and a daughter, who married a priest named Simon ben Nathanael. In the Christian tradition, Gamaliel is recognized as a Pharisee doctor of Jewish Law. Acts of the Apostles, 5 speaks of Gamaliel as a man held in great esteem by all Jews and as the Jewish law teacher of Paul the Apostle in . Gamaliel encouraged his fellow Pharisees to show leniency to the apostles of Jesus Christ in . In Jewish tradition In the Talmud, Gamaliel is described as bearing the titles Nasi (Hebrew: נָשִׂיא ''Nā ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
World Wide Words
Michael Quinion (born c. 1943) is a British etymologist and writer. He ran World Wide Words, a website devoted to linguistics. He graduated from Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he studied physical sciences and after which he joined BBC radio as a studio manager. Writer Quinion has contributed extensively to the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' as well as the ''Oxford Dictionary of New Words'' (Second Edition, 1996). He has since written ''Ologies and Isms'' (a 2002 dictionary of affixes) and ''Port Out, Starboard Home: And Other Language Myths'' (2004), published in the US as ''Ballyhoo, Buckaroo, and Spuds: Ingenious Tales of Words and Their Origins''''Port Out Starboard Home: And Other Language Myths'' is published outside the US by Penguin Books (Hardcover /Paperback ) In the United States it is published by the Smithsonian Institution Press as ''Ballyhoo, Buckaroo, and Spuds'' (Hardcover /Paperback ) His most recent book is ''Gallimaufry: A Hodgepodge of Our Vanishing Vocabulary' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the Roman Republic it became the dominant language in the Italian region and subsequently throughout the Roman Empire. Even after the fall of Western Rome, Latin remained the common language of international communication, science, scholarship and academia in Europe until well into the 18th century, when other regional vernaculars (including its own descendants, the Romance languages) supplanted it in common academic and political usage, and it eventually became a dead language in the modern linguistic definition. Latin is a highly inflected language, with three distinct genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter), six or seven noun cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative, and vocative), five declensions, four verb conjuga ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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