Definition (Adjective) Apt to catch at faults or take exception to actions; disposed to find fault, cavil, or raise objections; fault-finding, cavilling, carping. In Context "I did think the style just a shade too archaic, but considered it a captious criticism." Valerie Eliot and John Haffenden, Editors, The Letters of T. S. Eliot: Volume 3, 1926-1927, 2012.
One Word; Many Meanings In It's All in a Word, British linguist Vivian Cook reminds us that the true measure of our vocabulary is not so much our command of words as our command of their innumerable meanings. Take "mean" itself, which, among other things, can refer to signification (I don't know what you mean by that remark), intent (I mean to have dinner tonight), a consequence (This means trouble), unkindness (The children were mean to one another), avarice (Ebenezer Scrooge was mean with his money), lowliness (From mean beginnings, she rose high in her profession), excellence (He was a mean [...]
Definition (Verb) To reason; to carry out or form judgements by a process of logical reasoning. In Context "In any rigorous or narrow sense the voters are not highly rational; that is, most of them do not ratiocinate on the matter, e.g., to the extent that they do on the purchase of a car or a home." Peter Bachrach, Editor, Political Elites in a Democracy, 1971.
Critical Assessment "What matters about 'On the Road' is the book's raw energy yoked to its sense of promise in 'all that raw land,' the shove it offers to get out of one's own chair and see what lies over the horizon. . . . The book is a hymn to purposelessness, an antidote to what John Fowles once decried as our modern 'addiction to finding a reason, a function, a quantifiable yield' in everything we do. "Above all, 'On the Road' matters for its music: its plaintive, restless hum. In it, Kerouac perfected a melancholy optimism and a yearning for [...]
