TagSocial

horseracism

horseracism  n.— Note: This term has recently been credited by Jack Shafer as a coinage by Brian Montopoli in 2004, but Montopoli’s coinage came much later than the 1995 use cited here. It does seem likely to be the sort of word that is...

Mollie’s measure

Mollie’s measure  n.— «The current federal poverty threshold was developed in the 1960s by Mollie Orshansky, an economist with the Social Security Administration, who based her number on a 1955 Department of Agriculture study that said low...

blessing way

blessing way  n.— «The informant of the xójợ-djí, or blessing way…had little to say of additional peoples beyond the curt remark that the four clans would meet some relatives iợn the Navaho country.…Their sacred names in...

wh-imperative

wh-imperative  n.— «There is some evidence of impositives and wh- imperatives, but relative to all the questions that mothers address to their children, the number of the wh- imperatives and impositives is small.» —by Ioanna...

whimperative

whimperative  n.— «We shall not discuss here the complicated questions of implicit performatives, e.g., of so-called whimperatives, debated in the linguistic literature.» —“Directives, Norms, and Performatives” by K...

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