[Edprof] a treasury of old wordy expressions

[Clyde Bentley]

So, Gerald, why not launch a wiki on which we could contribute?  It would
be, like, so cool, dude.

­ ­ ­ 
Clyde Bentley
Print & Digital News
Missouri School of Journalism


Gerald Grow8/29/08 12:50 PM

> A magnificent anti-text, Greenville Kleiser's "Fifteen Thousand
> Useful Phrases" (originally published, I think, in 1917) has been
> placed online by the AskSam free-form database people. You can browse
> and search it at:
> 
> http://www.asksam.com/ebooks/releases.asp?doc=F&file=useful-phrases.ask
> 
> Take a look through it, especially the Literary Expressions and
> Striking Similes, which are a lot of fun to pontificate aloud.
> 
> You will find examples of the grand, florid pre-clear-and-concise
> writing of the late Victorian style, such as:
> 
> A breath of melancholy made itself felt like a chill and sudden gust
> from some unknown sea
> 
> A confused mass of impressions, like an old rubbish-heap
> 
> A drowsy murmur floats into the air like thistledown
> 
> A face as imperturbable as fate
> 
> A fatigued, faded, lusterless air, as of a caged creature
> 
> A book to beguile the tedious hours
> 
> A broad, complacent, admiring imbecility breathed from his nose and lips
> 
> A calm and premeditated prudence
> 
> ... Perhaps this collection of overwrought language will encourage us
> to ask what are the stock "useful words and expressions" of our own
> time and profession -- phrases that, some decades from now, may
> strike everyone as "SOOOO early twenty-first!"
> 
> Bee's knees,
> 
> Gerald Grow
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Edprof mailing list
> Edprof at editteach.org
> http://editteach.org/mailman/listinfo/edprof_editteach.org



 


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://editteach.org/pipermail/edprof_editteach.org/attachments/20080829/fa43ff0c/attachment.html