Definition (Noun) An armchair. In Context "I must have been dozing in the fauteuil, for suddenly I found myself sitting up, listening to an unwonted noise." Winston Churchill, The Crossing, 1904.
Definition (Adjective) Having white or grey hair, grey-haired. In Context "A very old man now took his place on the stand, whose hoary head and stooping gait proclaimed that time with him would soon cease to be." C. R. Williams, Fall River: An Authentic Narrative, 1834.
Definition (Verb) To swindle (a person); to defraud, cheat (of property, money, etc.). In Context "As con artists and confidence 'men' they can fool, mulct, and even destroy the lives of many, many people." Martin Kantor, The Psychopathy of Everyday Life: How Antisocial Personality Disorder Affects All of Us, 2006.
To Whom It May Concern On the road these summer days, you might encounter a very confusing car magnet. It is confusing not in its message but in its grammar. "Who" is a subject pronoun, meaning it should only replace the subject of a sentence – in this case, the person or animal doing the rescuing. It cannot replace the object of a sentence – in this case, the person or animal being rescued. What is needed is an object pronoun, namely, "whom." And so the magnet should read, "Who rescued whom?" "Who" and "whom" are a source of endless confusion in [...]
Definition (Noun) The spirit or genius which marks the thought or feeling of a period or age. In Context "Nevertheless, it is my belief that from time to time specific topics in social psychology just happen to become the target of dramatic surges of interest, and that this happens almost unaccountably as the Zeitgeist, or spirit of the times, dictates – rather like popular music and the fashions of different generations." Steve Duck, Relating to Others, Second Edition, 1999.
Critical Assessment "The occasional overwriting, the looping narrative, and the almost defiant lack of plot made this a hard book to sell to publishers. An array of editors at major houses rejected the novel, no doubt afraid it would never sell. It apparently sat for several years in the writer's desk. Then an obscure house, the Bellevue Literary Press, published it to such little fanfare that the New York Times (like most papers) ignored it completely. Then, miracle of miracles, it won the Pulitzer. "It remains to be seen where Paul Harding, surely a gifted writer, will go from here. But [...]
Definition (Adjective) Alluring by false show; showily or superficially attractive but having in reality no value or integrity. In Context "I had disembarked too recently yet to distinguish how much of nationality, fundamental realness, and primitive beauty still remained in this conquered race beneath the artificial and meretricious veneer of our importations." Paul Gaugin, Noa Noa, 1919.
