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Manqué
A ''manqué'' (feminine ''manquée'', from the French for "missed") is a person who has failed to live up to a specific expectation or ambition. It is usually used in combination with a profession: for example, a career civil servant with political prowess who nonetheless never attained political office might be described as a "politician manqué". It can also be used relative to a specific role model; a second-rate method actor might be referred to as a "Marlon Brando manqué". Overview The term derives from the past participle of the French verb ''manquer'' (to miss, to fail, to lack). In English, it is used postpositively, that is, following the noun it modifies in the manner of most adjectives in French. The British political writer and former M.P. David Marquand described the mid-20th century Labour politician Aneurin Bevan as a "statesman manqué", while the magazine '' Private Eye'' referred to journalist Janet Street-Porter as an "architect manquée". The ''Collins ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Postpositive Adjective
A postpositive adjective or postnominal adjective is an adjective that is placed after the noun or pronoun that it modifies, as in noun phrases such as ''attorney general'', ''queen regnant'', or ''all matters financial''. This contrasts with prepositive adjectives, which come before the noun or pronoun, as in noun phrases such as ''red rose'', ''lucky contestant'', or ''busy bees''. In some languages (Spanish language, Spanish, Welsh language, Welsh, Indonesian language, Indonesian, etc.), the postpositive placement of adjectives is the normal syntax, but in English language, English it is largely confined to archaism, archaic and poetic uses (e.g., "Once upon a midnight ''dreary''", as opposed to "Once upon a ''dreary'' midnight") as well as phrases borrowed from Romance languages or Latin (e.g., ''heir apparent'', ''aqua regia'') and certain fixed grammatical constructions (e.g., "Those ''anxious'' to leave soon exited").Rodney Huddleston, ''English Grammar: An Outline'', CUP 198 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Civil Servant
The civil service is a collective term for a sector of government composed mainly of career civil service personnel hired rather than elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leadership. A civil service official, also known as a public servant or public employee, is a person employed in the public sector by a government department or agency for public sector undertakings. Civil servants work for central and local governments, and answer to the government, not a political party. The extent of civil servants of a state as part of the "civil service" varies from country to country. In the United Kingdom (UK), for instance, only Crown (national government) employees are referred to as "civil servants" whereas employees of local authorities (counties, cities and similar administrations) are generally referred to as "local government officers", who are considered public servants but not civil servants. Thus, in the UK, a civil servant is a public ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece () was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity (), that comprised a loose collection of culturally and linguistically related city-states and communities. Prior to the Roman period, most of these regions were officially unified only once under the Kingdom of Macedon from 338 to 323 BC. In Western history, the era of classical antiquity was immediately followed by the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine period. Three centuries after the decline of Mycenaean Greece during the Bronze Age collapse, Greek urban poleis began to form in the 8th century BC, ushering in the Archaic period and the colonization of the Mediterranean Basin. This was followed by the age of Classical Greece, from the Greco-Persian Wars to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, and which included the Golden Age of Athens and the Peloponnesian War. The u ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polari
Polari () is a form of slang or Cant (language), cant historically used primarily in the United Kingdom by some actors, circus and fairground performers, professional wrestlers, merchant navy sailors, criminals and prostitutes, and particularly among the Sexuality and gender identity-based cultures, gay subculture. There is some debate about its origins, but it can be traced to at least the 19th century and possibly as early as the 16th century. Polari has a long-standing connection with Punch and Judy street puppeteers, who traditionally used it to converse. Terminology Alternative spellings include ''Parlare'', ''Parlary'', ''Palare'', ''Palarie'' and ''Palari''. Description Polari is a mixture of Romance (Italian language, ItalianBritis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Slang
A slang is a vocabulary (words, phrases, and linguistic usages) of an informal register, common in everyday conversation but avoided in formal writing and speech. It also often refers to the language exclusively used by the members of particular in-groups in order to establish group identity, exclude outsiders, or both. The word itself came about in the 18th century and has been defined in multiple ways since its conception, with no single technical usage in linguistics. Etymology of the word ''slang'' In its earliest attested use (1756), the word ''slang'' referred to the vocabulary of "low" or "disreputable" people. By the early nineteenth century, it was no longer exclusively associated with disreputable people, but continued to be applied to usages below the level of standard educated speech. In Scots dialect it meant "talk, chat, gossip", as used by Aberdeen poet William Scott in 1832: "The slang gaed on aboot their war'ly care." In northern English dialect it me ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roulette
Roulette (named after the French language, French word meaning "little wheel") is a casino game which was likely developed from the Italy, Italian game Biribi. In the game, a player may choose to place a bet on a single number, various groupings of numbers, the color red or black, whether the number is odd or even, or if the number is high or low. To determine the winning number, a croupier spins a wheel in one direction, then spins a ball in the opposite direction around a tilted circular track running around the outer edge of the wheel. The ball eventually loses momentum, passes through an area of deflectors, and falls onto the wheel and into one of the colored and numbered pockets on the wheel. The winnings are then paid to anyone who has placed a successful bet. History The first form of roulette was devised in 18th-century France. Many historians believe Blaise Pascal introduced a primitive form of roulette in the 17th century in his search for a perpetual motion machine. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New York City
New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive with a respective county. The city is the geographical and demographic center of both the Northeast megalopolis and the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the United States by both population and urban area. New York is a global center of finance and commerce, culture, technology, entertainment and media, academics, and scientific output, the arts and fashion, and, as home to the headquarters of the United Nations, international diplomacy. With an estimated population in 2024 of 8,478,072 distributed over , the city is the most densely populated major city in the United States. New York City has more than double the population of Los Angeles, the nation's second-most populous city. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Random House
Random House is an imprint and publishing group of Penguin Random House. Founded in 1927 by businessmen Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer as an imprint of Modern Library, it quickly overtook Modern Library as the parent imprint. Over the following decades, a series of acquisitions made it into one of the largest publishers in the United States. In 2013, it was merged with Penguin Group to form Penguin Random House, which is owned by the Germany-based media conglomerate Bertelsmann. Penguin Random House uses its brand for Random House Publishing Group and Random House Children's Books, as well as several imprints. Company history 20th century Random House was founded in 1927 by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer, two years after they acquired the Modern Library imprint from publisher Horace Liveright, which reprints classic works of literature. Cerf is quoted as saying, "We just said we were going to publish a few books on the side at random", which suggested the name Random ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lolita
''Lolita'' is a 1955 novel written by Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov. The protagonist and narrator is a French literature professor who moves to New England and writes under the pseudonym Humbert Humbert. He details his obsession and victimization of a 12-year-old girl, Dolores Haze, whom he describes as a " nymphet". Humbert kidnaps and sexually abuses Dolores after becoming her stepfather. Privately, he calls her "Lolita", the Spanish diminutive for Dolores. The novel was written in English, but fear of censorship in the U.S. (where Nabokov lived) and Britain led to it being first published in Paris, France, in 1955 by Olympia Press. The book has received critical acclaim regardless of the controversy it caused with the public. It has been included in many lists of best books, such as ''Time'' List of the 100 Best Novels, ''Le Monde'' 100 Books of the Century, Bokklubben World Library, Modern Library's 100 Best Novels, and The Big Read. The novel has bee ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov ( ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian and American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Born in Imperial Russia in 1899, Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian (1926–1938) while living in Berlin, where he met his wife, Véra Nabokov. He achieved international acclaim and prominence after moving to the United States, where he began writing in English. Trilingual in Russian, English, and French, Nabokov became a U.S. citizen in 1945 and lived mostly on the East Coast before returning to Europe in 1961, where he settled in Montreux, Switzerland. From 1948 to 1959, Nabokov was a professor of Russian literature at Cornell University. His 1955 novel ''Lolita'' ranked fourth on Modern Library's list of the Modern Library 100 Best Novels, 100 best 20th-century novels in 1998 and is considered one of the greatest works of 20th-century literature. Nabokov's ''Pale Fire'', published in 1962, ranked 5 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes ( ; 5 April 1588 – 4 December 1679) was an English philosopher, best known for his 1651 book ''Leviathan (Hobbes book), Leviathan'', in which he expounds an influential formulation of social contract theory. He is considered to be one of the founders of modern political philosophy. In his early life, overshadowed by his father's departure following a fight, he was taken under the care of his wealthy uncle. Hobbes's academic journey began in Malmesbury#Westport St Mary, Westport, leading him to the University of Oxford, where he was exposed to classical literature and mathematics. He then graduated from the University of Cambridge in 1608. He became a tutor to the Cavendish family, which connected him to intellectual circles and initiated his extensive travels across Europe. These experiences, including meetings with figures like Galileo, shaped his intellectual development. After returning to England from France in 1637, Hobbes witnessed the destruction and br ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
