Definition (Noun) A place where bees are kept; a bee-house. In Context "This nearly 3,000-year-old apiary contains between 75 and 200 hives, and it is estimated that it could have held more than a million bees, with an annual yield of 1,100 pounds of honey and 155 pounds of beeswax." Daniel Marlos, The Curious World of Bugs: The Bugman's Guide to the Mysterious and Remarkable Lives of Things That Crawl, 2010.
Definition (Verb) To stay or live in the countryside; to live a quiet country life. In Context "The area south of Chapel Hill is still fairly rural and is a popular living area for university people with an itch to rusticate." Sara Pitzer, Off the Beaten Path North Carolina: A Guide to Unique Places, 2012.
Familiar Versus Unfamiliar Words by Dana Eckstein Among the many choices we must make as writers is whether to serve up words our readers will digest without a thought or to broaden their palates with words that may be strange to them. In this guest post, Dana Eckstein from the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory explores the tension between "efficiency" and "invention." When I was little, I entertained a regular argument with my father. He earned a living as a lawyer, well-coiffed with a gray suit, satin tie, and a gleaming leather briefcase in which he neatly stored all his legal briefs [...]
Definition (Adjective) Having reached the stage of drunkenness characterized by tearful sentimentality and effusive displays of affection; characteristic of (the behaviour of) someone who has reached this stage. In Context "Gully is a neighbouring farmer who drinks at Shamus Henley's pub in Barntrosna where he grows ever more maudlin about his inability to find a wife." Peter Haining, Editor, Great Irish Drinking Stories, 2002.
Princeton Writes honored those who entered its second annual staff essay contest at a celebratory reception at Maclean House on June 16. Before a beaming crowd of family, friends, and colleagues, the winner of this year's Princeton Writes Prize, Bryant Blount, and honorable mention recipients April Armstrong, Violette Chamoun, and Brian Mondschein accepted their certificates, along with autographed copies of On Writing Well by the late William Zinsser '44. In his remarks, Princeton Writes' director, John Weeren, praised contestants for embracing a topic -- diversity -- that is "so idiosyncratic and so transcendent; so central to an understanding of oneself and others [...]
Critical Assessment "Ferrante has said that she likes to write narratives 'where the writing is clear, honest, and where the facts—the facts of ordinary life—are extraordinarily gripping when read.' Her prose has indeed a bare lucidity, and is often aphoristic and continent, in Ann Goldstein’s elegant, burnished English. But what is thrilling about her earlier novels is that, in sympathetically following her characters’ extremities, Ferrante’s own writing has no limits, is willing to take every thought forward to its most radical conclusion and backward to its most radical birthing. This is most obvious in the fearless way in which her female [...]
