12
Aug 11
That’s the definition of “panegyric,” the NYT‘s most-looked-up word. The rest is here. Nieman Lab’s Megan Garber notes the list’s general dreariness:
Though journalism, as an institution, isn’t especially renowned for its sunny outlook on the world, it’s still remarkable how pessimistic and generally morose (hubris! feckless! dyspeptic!) the looked-up words tend to be. … If a newspaper is a cultural product, a nation talking to itself and all that, then the preponderance of profligacy and hauteur and duplicity and blasphemy on the list doesn’t bode terribly well for our collective conversation. If some future civilization were to come across the Times’ list and assume it’s representative of The Times We Live In, they’d probably feel sorry for us.
15
Mar 11
Ursula K. LeGuin on swearing:
I guess what’s happened is that what used to be a shockword has become a noise that’s supposed to intensify the emotion in what you’re saying. Or maybe it occurs just to bridge the gap between words, so that actual words become the shit that happens in between saying fucking?
Via You Don’t Say.
07
Oct 10
From a NYer piece on author David Grossman:
“[W]e feel our lives most when they are running out: as we age, as we lose our physical abilities, our health, and, of course, family members and friends who are important to us. Then we pause for a moment, sink into ourselves, and feel: here was something, and now it is gone. It will not return.”
Absolutely perfect phrasing. The quote is from a piece on Bruno Schulz Grossman wrote last year (which was also great, and is unfortunately gated).
