“
NOT everyone in this world has the fate to cherish the fullest form of love.
some are born ,just to experience the abbreviation of it.
”
”
Ravinder Singh (I Too Had a Love Story)
“
At heart, I have always been a coper, I've mostly been able to walk around with my wounds safely hidden, and I've always stored up my deep depressive episodes for the weeks off when there was time to have an abbreviated version of a complete breakdown. But in the end, I'd be able to get up and on with it, could always do what little must be done to scratch by.
”
”
Elizabeth Wurtzel (Prozac Nation)
“
rolf! what? are you really rolling on the floor laughing? well, please stay down there for a sec while I KICK YOUR ASS.
”
”
David Levithan (Will Grayson, Will Grayson)
“
All good books are about everything, abbreviated.
”
”
Andrew Smith (Grasshopper Jungle)
“
...that the Musgroves had had the ill fortune of a very troublesome, hopeless son; and the good fortune to lose him before he reached his twentieth year; that he had been sent to sea, because he was stupid and unmanageable on shore; that he had been very little cared for at any time by his family, though quite as much as he deserved; seldom heard of, and scarcely at all regretted... He had, in fact, though his sisters were now doing all they could for him, by calling him 'poor Richard,' been nothing better than a thick-headed, unfeeling, unprofitable Dick Musgrove, who had never done anything to entitle himself to more than the abbreviation of his name, living or dead.
”
”
Jane Austen (Persuasion)
“
The fuck?” he said.
“The fuck?” said Jess. “The fuck what?”
“It's an American abbreviation,” said Martin. “ «The fuck?» means «What the fuck?» In America, they’re so busy that they don’t have time to say the «what».
”
”
Nick Hornby (A Long Way Down)
“
I knew chemistry would be worse, because I'd seen a big card of the ninety-odd elements hung up in the chemistry lab, and all the perfectly good words like gold and silver and cobalt and aluminum were shortened to ugly abbreviations with different decimal numbers after them.
”
”
Sylvia Plath
“
The proper ending for any story about people it seems to me, since life is now a polymer in which the Earth is wrapped so tightly, should be the same abbreviation, which I now write large because I feel like it, which is this one:
ETC.
”
”
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Breakfast of Champions)
“
The word "fine" is the greatest abbreviation and obviously wrong.
”
”
Lydia Davis (Samuel Johnson Is Indignant)
“
And when, after fifteen years of bingeing, barfing, starving, needles and tubes and terror and rage, and medical crises and personal failure and loss after loss - when, after all this, you are in your early twenties and staring down a vastly abbreviated life expectancy, and the eating disorder still takes up half your body, half your brain, with its invisible eroding force, when you have spent the majority of your life sick, when you do not yet know what it means to be 'well,' or 'normal,' when you doubt that those words even have meaning anymore, there are still no answers. You will die young, and you have no way to make sense of that fact.
You have this: You are thin.
”
”
Marya Hornbacher (Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia)
“
Why is abbreviation such a long word?
”
”
Teresa Monachino (Words Fail Me)
“
He also thought that ‘abbreviation’ was too long for its meaning, that ‘monosyllabic’ should have one syllable, ‘dyslexic’ should be renamed ‘O’ and ‘unspeakable’ should be respelt ‘unsfzpxkable.
”
”
Jasper Fforde (The Big Over Easy (Nursery Crime, #1))
“
Arizona is the A to Z of abbreviations.
”
”
Jarod Kintz ($3.33 (the title is the price))
“
That was what we call in the trade an Unscheduled Reality Excursion, usually abbreviated to ‘Oh fuck.’
”
”
Charles Stross (The Atrocity Archives (Laundry Files, #1))
“
The phone in my hand buzzed. Logan had just texted I Love You - so cute how he never abbreviated it.
”
”
Jeri Smith-Ready (Shade (Shade, #1))
“
Life used to move much more quickly when I was a girl. We needed to abbreviate just to keep up.
”
”
Gabrielle Zevin (All These Things I've Done (Birthright, #1))
“
The soul of wit may become the very body of untruth. However elegant and memorable, brevity can never, in the nature of things, do justice to all the facts of a complex situation. On such a theme one can be brief only by omission and simplification. Omission and simplification help us to understand - but help us, in many cases, to understand the wrong thing; for our comprehension may be only of the abbreviator's neatly formulated notions, not of the vast, ramifying reality from which these notions have been so arbitrarily abstracted.
”
”
Aldous Huxley (Brave New World Revisited)
“
The glorification of hatred is predicated on a foundation of fear-induced ignorance venomous to haters and those they believe they hate.
”
”
Aberjhani (Splendid Literarium: A Treasury of Stories, Aphorisms, Poems, and Essays)
“
The abbreviated exam week meant that Wednesday was the last day of school for us. And all day long, it was hard not to walk around, thinking about the lastness of it all.
”
”
John Green (Paper Towns)
“
Sorry to interrupt, boys and girls,” Logan calls out, “but it’s time to put your p’s and v’s away. Gotta go, G.”
I shoot Garrett a blank look. “P’s and v’s?” Half the time I can barely make sense of Logan’s made-up acronyms and abbreviations.
Garrett grins at me. “Oh come on, really? Even I got one. It’s grade school shit.”
I think it over, then blush. “How exactly does one put away their vagina?”
He snickers. “Ask Logan. Actually, please don’t.
”
”
Elle Kennedy (The Deal (Off-Campus, #1))
“
His life, measured in space and time, will take up a mere few lines, which my ignorance will abbreviate further.
”
”
Jorge Luis Borges (Collected Non Fiction)
“
I must reluctantly observe that two causes, the abbreviation of time, and the failure of hope, will always tinge with a browner shade the evening of life.
”
”
Edward Gibbon (Memoirs of My Life)
“
The proper ending for any story about people it seems to me, since life is now a polymer in which the Earth is wrapped so tightly, should be that same abbreviation, which I now write large because I feel like it, which is this one: ETC. And it is in order to acknowledge the continuity of this polymer that I begin so many sentences with 'And' and 'So' and end so many paragraphs with '...and so on.' And so on. 'It's all like an ocean!' cried Dostoevski. I say it's all like cellophane.
”
”
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Breakfast of Champions)
“
We are all, as Huxley says someplace, Great Abbreviators, meaning that none of us has the wit to know the whole truth, the time to tell it if we believed we did, or an audience so gullible as to accept it.
”
”
Neil Postman (Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business)
“
I mean, that's at least in part why I ingested chemical waste - it was a kind of desire to abbreviate myself. To present the CliffNotes of the emotional me, as opposed to the twelve-column read.
I used to refer to my drug use as putting the monster in the box. I wanted to be less, so I took more - simple as that. Anyway, I eventually decided that the reason Dr. Stone had told me I was hypomanic was that he wanted to put me on medication instead of actually treating me. So I did the only rational thing I could do in the face of such as insult - I stopped talking to Stone, flew back to New York, and married Paul Simon a week later.
”
”
Carrie Fisher (Wishful Drinking)
“
I wasn't kidding about the flying-kids part. Or the talking-dog part.
Anyone who's up to speed on the Adventures of Amazing Max and Her Flying, Fun-Loving Cohorts, you can skip this next page or so. Those of you who picked up this book cold, even thought it's clearly part three of the series, well, get with the program, people! I can't take two days to get you caught up on everything! Here's the abbreviated version (which is pretty, I might add):
A bunch of mad scientists (mad crazy not mad angry- though a lot of them seem to have anger-management issues, especially around me) have been playing around with recombinant life-forms, where they graft different species' DNA together.
”
”
James Patterson (Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports (Maximum Ride, #3))
“
He had, in fact, though his sisters were now doing all they could for him, by calling him "poor Richard," been nothing better than a thick-headed, unfeeling, unprofitable Dick Musgrove, who had never done anything to entitle himself to more than the abbreviation of his name, living or dead.
”
”
Jane Austen (Persuasion)
“
A foreign language can signify a total separation. It can represent, even today, the ferocity of our ignorance. To write in a new language, to penetrate its heart, no technology helps. You can’t accelerate the process, you can’t abbreviate it. The
”
”
Jhumpa Lahiri (In Other Words (Italian Edition))
“
There are objects made up of two sense elements, one visual, the other auditory—the colour of a sunrise and the distant call of a bird. Other objects are made up of many elements—the sun, the water against the swimmer's chest, the vague quivering pink which one sees when the eyes are closed, the feeling of being swept away by a river or by sleep. These second degree objects can be combined with others; using certain abbreviations, the process is practically an infinite one. There are famous poems made up of one enormous word, a word which in truth forms a poetic object, the creation of the writer. The fact that no one believes that nouns refer to an actual reality means, paradoxically enough, that there is no limit to the numbers of them.
”
”
Jorge Luis Borges (Ficciones)
“
These reports that are not explained by natural phenomena or exploding outhouses are known as UFO's, which is the official abbreviation for Unidentified Flying Objects. I suppose it could also stand for Uncommonly Fat Orangutans, but in this case it does not.
”
”
Cuthbert Soup (Another Whole Nother Story (A Whole Nother Story))
“
For those who don’t know, ‘Antifa’ is an abbreviation of ‘antifascist’, which means they’re allowed to punch people in the name of tolerance.
”
”
Titania McGrath (Woke: A Guide to Social Justice)
“
Homer, in the second book of the Iliad says with fine enthusiasm, "Give me masturbation or give me death." Caesar, in his Commentaries, says, "To the lonely it is company; to the forsaken it is a friend; to the aged and to the impotent it is a benefactor. They that are penniless are yet rich, in that they still have this majestic diversion." In another place this experienced observer has said, "There are times when I prefer it to sodomy." Robinson Crusoe says, "I cannot describe what I owe to this gentle art." Queen Elizabeth said, "It is the bulwark of virginity." Cetewayo, the Zulu hero, remarked, "A jerk in the hand is worth two in the bush." The immortal Franklin has said, "Masturbation is the best policy." Michelangelo and all of the other old masters--"old masters," I will remark, is an abbreviation, a contraction--have used similar language. Michelangelo said to Pope Julius II, "Self-negation is noble, self-culture beneficent, self-possession is manly, but to the truly great and inspiring soul they are poor and tame compared with self-abuse." Mr. Brown, here, in one of his latest and most graceful poems, refers to it in an eloquent line which is destined to live to the end of time--"None knows it but to love it; none name it but to praise.
”
”
Mark Twain (On Masturbation)
“
Celestia laughed wickedly. "Danny is your BBB, silly. I’d never ask you to marry him."
"BBB?" Now she had to learn abbreviations? She didn’t have the patience to deal with this tonight.
"Bodyguard, Blood Bag, and cover Boyfriend." Celestia counted the items off one by one on her beautifully manicured fingers.
"Convenient." Sarcasm laced Savannah’s words, but internally her mind processed the logic behind the BBB.
From Vampire Princess Rising (book two in the Winters Saga)
”
”
Jami Brumfield
“
You have to make your own condensed notes. You learn from MAKING them. A lot of thinking goes into deciding what to include and exclude. You develop your own system of abbreviations and memory methods for the information.
”
”
Peter Rogers (Straight A at Stanford and on to Harvard)
“
We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. 'Mimeme' comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like 'gene'. I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to meme. If it is any consolation, it could alternatively be thought of as being related to 'memory', or to the French word même. It should be pronounced to rhyme with 'cream'.
”
”
Richard Dawkins (The Selfish Gene)
“
I love the prairie! So often I have seen the dawn come and the light flood over the land and everything turn radiant at once, that word "good" so profoundly affirmed in my soul that I am amazed I should be allowed to witness such a thing. There may have been a more wonderful first moment "when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy," but for all I know to the contrary, they still do sing and shout, and they certainly might well. Here on the prairie there is nothing to distract attention from the evening and the morning, nothing on the horizon to abbreviate or to delay. Mountains would seem an impertinence from that point of view.
”
”
Marilynne Robinson (Gilead (Gilead, #1))
“
Not long ago I was invited to a librarians’ event by a lady who cheerfully told me, “We like to think of ourselves as ‘information providers.’” I was appalled by this want of ambition; I made my excuses and didn’t go. After all, if you have a choice, why not call yourselves “Shining Acolytes of the Sacred Flame of Literacy in a Dark and Encroaching Universe”? I admit this is hard to put on a button, so why not abbreviate it to “librarians”?
”
”
Terry Pratchett (A Slip of the Keyboard: Collected Non-Fiction)
“
The abbreviation for Brazil, BRA, makes me think of breasts. I have no idea why.
”
”
Jarod Kintz (This Book is Not for Sale)
“
Cat Raven.” An abbreviation of Catherine, and the hair color of the first man who tried to kill me. See? Sentimental.
”
”
Jeaniene Frost (Halfway to the Grave (Night Huntress, #1))
“
The studio also featured a large wall calendar with cryptic abbreviations, presumably reminders. Also doodles of gears, sprockets, and malformed genitalia, because artists were artists.
”
”
Yoon Ha Lee (Phoenix Extravagant)
“
The name Alaska is probably an abbreviation of Unalaska, derived from the original Aleut word agunalaksh, which means "the shores where the sea breaks its back." The war between water and land is never-ending. Waves shatter themselves in spent fury against the rocky bulwarks of the coast; giant tides eat away the sand beaches and alter the entire contour of an island overnight; williwaw winds pour down the side of a volcano like snow sliding off a roof, building to a hundred-mile velocity in a matter of minutes and churning the ocean into a maelstrom where the stoutest vessels founder.
”
”
Corey Ford (Where the Sea Breaks Its Back: The Epic Story of Early Naturalist Georg Steller and the Russian Exploration of Alaska)
“
When I wake up I go through an abbreviated process of mourning all over again. Plainly, there’s something within me that’s ready to believe in life after death. And it’s not the least bit interested in whether there’s any sober evidence for it.
”
”
Carl Sagan (The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark)
“
After all, I need to be a godfather slash uncle. I think the term is ‘guncle’.” “Guncle?” “Abbreviated, ‘gay uncle’.
”
”
Sean Kennedy (Tigerland (Tigers and Devils, #2))
“
the creation tales of Genesis are edited and abbreviated versions of much more detailed Mesopotamian texts, which were in turn versions of an original Sumerian text.
”
”
Zecharia Sitchin (Genesis Revisited: Is Modern Science Catching Up With Ancient Knowledge?)
“
Miss, n. A title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate they are in the market. Miss, Misses (Mrs.) and Mister (Mr.) are the three most distinctly disagreeable words in the language, in sound and sense. Two are corruptions of Mistress, the other of Master. In the general abolition of social titles in this our country they miraculously escaped to plague us. If we must have them let us be consistent and give one to the unmarried man. I venture to suggest Mush, abbreviated to Mh.
”
”
Ambrose Bierce
“
Modern man no longer works at what cannot be abbreviated
”
”
Paul Valéry
“
Email to Eric from Bill:
GFY. Let me know if you need help with that abbreviation Sheriff.
Bill
”
”
Charlaine Harris (The Sookie Stackhouse Companion (Sookie Stackhouse, #10.5))
“
she loathed all the IM and texting abbreviations and acronyms. She was a snob like that
”
”
Jessica Park (Flat-Out Love (Flat-Out Love, #1))
“
In modern society the term "no" have changed meaning. It now seems to be an abbreviation for "Negotiations Open".
”
”
Jury Nel
“
The embryological record is almost always abbreviated in accordance with the tendency of nature (to be explained on the principle of survival of the fittest) to attain her needs by the easiest means.
”
”
Francis Maitland Balfour
“
Properly, an acronym is a word that is created from the initial letters or major parts of a compound term whose pronunciation is a word (“NAY-toe,” “SNAF-oo”), and an initialism is an abbreviation created from the initial letters of a compound term, like “FBI,” whose pronunciation is a collection of letters (“EFF BEE EYE”). “Acronym” gets used of both of these, however, and such use burns the biscuits of some.
”
”
Kory Stamper (Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries)
“
The once slave, though free, would not leave his master. He would have died for him. He was a man of about thirty, vigorous, active, clever, intelligent, gentle, and calm, sometimes naive, always merry, obliging, and honest. His name was Nebuchadnezzar, but he only answered to the familiar abbreviation of Neb.
”
”
Jules Verne (The Mysterious Island)
“
What’s the dog called?' Jason asked.
'Feraclestinius Androbrelium Pathershin the Seventh.'
‘No, I meant his entire name.’
‘To abbreviate, I call him Feracles.
”
”
Brandon Mull (A World Without Heroes (Beyonders, #1))
“
MY ADULTHOOD HAS been about recuperating. There was no compulsion to give life to anyone else because I was depleted. There was nothing to give.
”
”
Ariel Leve (An Abbreviated Life: A Memoir)
“
Technology can degrade (and endanger) every aspect of a sucker’s life while convincing him that it is becoming more “efficient.” - The difference between technology and slavery is that slaves are fully aware that they are not free. - You have a real life if and only if you do not compete with anyone in any of your pursuits. - With terminal disease, nature lets you die with abbreviated suffering; medicine lets you suffer with prolonged dying. -
”
”
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms)
“
Use the word “y’all,” and before you knew it, you’d find yourself in a haystack French-kissing an underage goat. Along with grits and hush puppies, the abbreviated form of you all was a dangerous step on an insidious path leading straight to the doors of the Baptist church.
”
”
David Sedaris (Me Talk Pretty One Day)
“
I became one of those annoying people who always say Ciao! Only I was extra annoying, since I would always explain where the word ciao comes from. (If you must know, it's an abbreviation of a phrase used by medieval Venetians as an intimate salutation: Sono il suo schiavo! Meaning: "I am your slave!") Just speaking these words made me feel sexy and happy. My divorce lawyer told me not to worry; she said she had one client (Korean by heritage) who, after a yucky divorce, legally changed her name to something Italian, just to feel sexy and happy again.
”
”
Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
“
You try to blunt certain emotions, but your tool isn’t a scalpel, it’s a sledgehammer. And you’re blunting all of them. To protect yourself from feeling the horrible things, you prevent yourself from feeling some of the positive things.
”
”
Ariel Leve (An Abbreviated Life)
“
If we are inclined to forget how much there is in the world besides that which we anticipate, then works of art are perhaps a little to blame, for in them we find at work the same process of simplification or selection as in the imagination. Artistic accounts include severe abbreviations of what reality will force upon us. A travel book may tell us, for example, that the narrator journeyed through the afternoon to reach the hill town of X and after a night in its medieval monastery awoke to a misty dawn. But we never simply 'journey through an afternoon'. We sit in a train. Lunch digests awkwardly within us. The seat cloth is grey. We look out the window at a field. We look back inside. A drum of anxieties resolves in our consciousness. We notice a luggage label affixed to a suitcase in a rack above the seats opposite. We tap a finger on the window ledge. A broken nail on an index finger catches a thread. It starts to rain. A drop wends a muddy path down the dust-coated window. We wonder where our ticket might be. We look back at the field. It continues to rain. At last, the train starts to move. It passes an iron bridge, after which it inexplicably stops. A fly lands on the window And still we may have reached the end only of the first minute of a comprehensive account of the events lurking within the deceptive sentence 'He journeyed through the afternoon'.
A storyteller who provides us with such a profusion of details would rapidly grow maddening. Unfortunately, life itself often subscribes to this mode of storytelling, wearking us out with repetitions, misleading emphases[,] and inconsequential plot lines. It insists on showing us Burdak Electronics, the safety handle in the car, a stray dog, a Christmas card[,] and a fly that lands first on the rim and then the centre of a laden ashtray.
Which explains the curious phenomenon whereby valuable elements may be easier to experience in art and in anticipation than in reality. The anticipatory and artistic imaginations omit and compress; they cut away the periods of boredom and direct our attention to critical moments, and thus, without either lying or embellishing, they lend to life a vividness and a coherence that it may lack in the distracting woolliness of the present.
”
”
Alain de Botton (The Art of Travel)
“
Dreams are associated with a state called REM sleep, the abbreviation standing for rapid eye movement. The REM state is strongly correlated with sexual arousal. Experiments have been performed in which sleeping subjects are awakened whenever REM state emerges, while members of a control group are awakened just as often each night but not when they're dreaming. After some days, the control group is a little groggy, but the experimental group - the ones who are prevented from dreaming - is hallucinating in daytime. It's not that a few people with a particular abnormality can be made to hallucinate in this way; anyone is capable of hallucinations.
”
”
Carl Sagan (The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark)
“
Dr. Kristin Neff is a researcher and professor at the University of Texas at Austin. She runs the Self-Compassion Research Lab, where she studies how we develop and practice self-compassion. According to Neff, self-compassion has three elements: self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness. Here are abbreviated definitions for each of these: Self-kindness: Being warm and understanding toward ourselves when we suffer, fail, or feel inadequate, rather than ignoring our pain or flagellating ourselves with self-criticism. Common humanity: Common humanity recognizes that suffering and feelings of personal inadequacy are part of the shared human experience—something we all go through rather than something that happens to “me” alone. Mindfulness: Taking a balanced approach to negative emotions so that feelings are neither suppressed nor exaggerated. We cannot ignore our pain and feel compassion for it at the same time. Mindfulness requires that we not “over-identify” with thoughts and feelings, so that we are caught up and swept away by negativity.
”
”
Brené Brown (The Gifts of Imperfection)
“
The child tends to be stripped of all social influences but those of the market place, all sense of place, function and class is weakened, the characteristics of region and clan, neighborhood or kindred are attenuated. The individual is denuded of everything but appetities, desires and tastes, wrenched from any context of human obligation or commitment. It is a process of mutilation; and once this has been achieved, we are offered the consolation of reconstituting the abbreviated humanity out of the things and the goods around us, and the fantasies and vapors which they emit. A culture becomes the main determinant upon morality, beliefs and purposes, usurping more and more territory that formerly belonged to parents, teachers, community, priests and politics alike.
”
”
Jeremy Seabrook (What Went Wrong?: Working people and the ideals of the labour movement)
“
When you abbreviate your learning, you abbreviate your growth. Expand your knowledge and you keep growing taller and fatter than your limitations.
”
”
Israelmore Ayivor (The Great Hand Book of Quotes)
“
Never abbreviate your dreams. Only short-hand people always do that. Their punishment is that they can't stretch far, further and forward into the future. Dream only big dreams!
”
”
Israelmore Ayivor
“
MCLEAN HOSPITAL IS known for its former residents who, with their distinguished madness, gave it a noted reputation. Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton.
”
”
Ariel Leve (An Abbreviated Life: A Memoir)
“
BECAUSE HER LOVE was a vapor. It didn’t touch, it didn’t heal, it didn’t soothe.
”
”
Ariel Leve (An Abbreviated Life: A Memoir)
“
And not trusting one’s mother is, on a cellular level, unjust.
”
”
Ariel Leve (An Abbreviated Life: A Memoir)
“
I would have liked to have known you when you were happy.
”
”
Ariel Leve (An Abbreviated Life: A Memoir)
“
We shouldn’t abbreviate the truth but rather get a new method of presentation.
”
”
Edward R. Tufte
“
code name for this bulk collection initiative was indicated in the very “dirty word” that got it flagged on my system: STLW, an abbreviation of STELLARWIND.
”
”
Edward Snowden (Permanent Record)
“
I propose that we change its abbreviation from ISIL or ISIS into a new name that contains the initial letters of each country or lobby that contributed to its existence.
”
”
Louis Yako
“
OK isn’t just all right—it’s also the abbreviation for the state above Texas.
”
”
Jarod Kintz (This Book Title is Invisible)
“
Anyone who fails to consult the explanatory notes and the list of abbreviations at the beginning of a dictionary has only himself to blame if he is not able to use it well.
”
”
Mortimer J. Adler (How to Read a Book)
“
In the military, where we love abbreviations, we have a term for the one element in a situation that holds you back—a limfac (limiting factor).
”
”
Stanley McChrystal (Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World)
“
Your taste for abbreviation meant that instead of finishing the works you undertook, you finished yourself. You
”
”
Édouard Levé (Suicide (French Literature))
“
As a rule, any loan that had been turned into an acronym or abbreviation could more clearly be called a “subprime loan,” but the bond market didn’t want to be clear.
”
”
Michael Lewis (The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine)
“
the poorly typed lines, the symbols and abbreviations of Internet chat that make such language seem so much like a process of decay. As
”
”
Garth Greenwell (What Belongs to You)
“
Claire had a theory that the abbreviation of definitely stemmed from everyone’s inability to spell it correctly. It always got spellchecked into defiantly.
”
”
Adam Cesare (The Summer Job)
“
It was so in the Pequod with the little negro Pippin by nick-name, Pip by abbreviation.
”
”
Herman Melville (Moby Dick: or, the White Whale)
“
In some instances, the process of pejoration rebrands a feminine word as an insult not for women but for men. Take the words buddy and sissy: Today, we might use sissy to describe a weak or overly effeminate man, while buddy is a synonym for a close pal. We don’t think of these words as being related, but in the beginning, buddy and sissy were abbreviations of the words brother and sister.
”
”
Amanda Montell (Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language)
“
When you have an erratic, unpredictable, and aggressive parent, a child will detect signs and know when not to say something or know when to hide, so a threat-detecting sense begins to emerge early on. In the end, it wires the individual to be acutely aware and highly reactive to perceived threats.
”
”
Ariel Leve (An Abbreviated Life)
“
She glanced pointedly at the flopping tadpole.
"What?"
"Take it back."
"You're kidding, right?" he said disbelievingly.
"Do we have time?"
He considered that. "Yes, but--"
"Then, no I'm not."
"That lake was three hops ago," he said impatiently.
"If you don't take it back it's going to die, and while you may think it's just a pathetic little thing with an abbreviated little life that hardly even signifies in the fairy scheme of things, I'll bet in the tadpole scheme of things it's really looking forward to becoming a frog. Now take it back. A life is a life. I don't care how tiny an almighty fairy thinks it is."
One dark brow arched and he inclined his head. "Yes, Gabrielle." Scooping up the tadpole in one big hand, gently enough that it gave her pause, he popped out.
-Gabrielle and Adam Black
”
”
Karen Marie Moning (The Immortal Highlander (Highlander, #6))
“
The abbreviators of works do injury to knowledge and to love.Of what value is he who,in order to abbreviate the parts of those things of which he professes to give complete knowledge,leaves out the greater part of the things of which the whole is composed?Oh human stupidity!You don’t see that you are falling into the same error as one who strips a tree of its adornment of branches full of leaves,intermingled with fragrant flowers or fruit in order to demonstrate that the tree is good for making planks
”
”
Leonardo da Vinci
“
...the way she lived and died waiting for every text message, the way she overthought every abbreviation and smiley face, and hunted for every nuance in a medium so brief there was nowhere for nuance to hide.
”
”
Lisa Henry (Falling Away)
“
A pair of workman’s brogans encased my feet, and for trousers I was furnished with a pair of pale blue, washed-out overalls, one leg of which was fully ten inches shorter than the other. The abbreviated leg looked as though the devil had there clutched for the Cockney’s soul and missed the shadow for the substance.
”
”
Jack London (The Sea Wolf)
“
What did the real damage was buried beneath the surface. Her denial that these incidents ever occurred and the accusation that I was looking to punish her with my unjustified anger. The erasure of the abuse was worse than the abuse.
”
”
Ariel Leve (An Abbreviated Life: A Memoir)
“
I read about a little girl who had to navigate an unsafe world, a world without boundaries. This child was left alone most of the time—if not physically, emotionally. And then every once in a while, it would hit me that that child was me.
”
”
Ariel Leve (An Abbreviated Life: A Memoir)
“
Thankfully existing only in SMALL pockets within our discipline, is “intellectual” snobbery. It’s a hushed but ugly truth that people are made to feel not worthy to be among a certain set – didn’t attend the right school or don’t have the requisite abbreviations to follow their name. I know what that feels like. Good thing I'm pigheaded, have a bigger vision and committed to my craft, or I would’ve succumbed to it long ago. That is why when I meet an emerging writer who’s serious about developing their craft, I try to encourage them as much as I can. I say IGNORE the highbrow cliques and prove your mettle by growing, accepting balanced feedback and most of all, creating work that will stand the test of time. Period.
”
”
Sandra Sealy
“
My parents died years ago. I was very close to them. I still miss them terribly. I know I always will. I long to believe that their essence, their personalities, what I loved so much about them, are - really and truly - still in existence somewhere. I wouldn't ask very much, just five or ten minutes a year, say, to tell them about their grandchildren, to catch them up on the latest news, to remind them that I love them. There's a part of me - no matter how childish it sounds - that wonders how they are. "Is everything all right?" I want to ask. The last words I found myself saying to my father, at the moment of his death, were "Take care."
Sometimes I dream that I'm talking to my parents, and suddenly - still immersed in the dreamwork - I'm seized by the overpowering realization that they didn't really die, that it's all been some kind of horrible mistake. Why, here they are, alive and well, my father making wry jokes, my mother earnestly advising me to wear a muffler because the weather is chilly. When I wake up I go through an abbreviated process of mourning all over again. Plainly, there's something within me that's ready to believe in life after death. And it's not the least bit interested in whether there's any sober evidence for it.
So I don't guffaw at the woman who visits her husband's grave and chats him up every now and then, maybe on the anniversary of his death. It's not hard to understand. And if I have difficulties with the ontological status of who she's talking to, that's all right. That's not what this is about. This is about humans being human.
”
”
Carl Sagan
“
If you wanted to greet him or get his attention, you had to say: “Oh, Mr. Forest-Ranger-who-stands-in-the-tower-watching-out-for-forest fires!” If you abbreviated it, or, heaven help us, addressed him simply as “David,” you would get no response.
”
”
Katherine Paterson (Stories of My Life)
“
The present is a fleeting moment, the past is no more; and our prospect of futurity is dark and doubtful. This day may possibly be my last: but the laws of probability, so true in general, so fallacious in particular, still allow about fifteen years. I shall soon enter into the period which, as the most agreeable of his long life, was selected by the judgement and experience of the sage Fontenelle. His choice is approved by the eloquent historian of nature, who fixes our moral happiness to the mature season in which our passions are supposed to be calmed, our duties fulfilled, our ambition satisfied, our fame and fortune established on a solid basis. In private conversation, that great and amiable man added the weight of his own experience; and this autumnal felicity might be exemplified in the lives of Voltaire, Hume, and many other men of letters. I am far more inclined to embrace than to dispute this comfortable doctrine. I will not suppose any premature decay of the mind or body; but I must reluctantly observe that two causes, the abbreviation of time, and the failure hope, will always tinge with a browner shade the evening of life.
...The warm desires, the long expectations of youth, are founded on the ignorance of themselves and of the world: they are generally damped by time and experience, by disappointment or possession; and after the middle season the crowd must be content to remain at the foot of the mountain: while the few who have climbed the summit aspire to descend or expect to fall. In old age, the consolation of hope is reserved for the tenderness of parents, who commence a new life in their children; the faith of enthusiasts, who sing Hallelujahs above the clouds; and the vanity of authors, who presume the immortality of their name and writings.
”
”
Edward Gibbon (The Autobiography and Correspondence of Edward Gibbon the Historian)
“
And if we really want to stay current and relevant, we have to use social media. And by that I mean Facebook. There are one billion people on Facebook. Maybe older people should have our own social media. We can call it What Did That Doctor Do to Your Face Book? In fact, we can have our own text and Facebook abbreviations. We can have our own WTF, LOL, and LMAO. GNIB: Good news, it’s benign. OMG: Oh, my gout. DMMLIMNWD: Don’t make me laugh, I’m not wearing Depends. WAI: Where am I? ITIHSBCR: I think I had sex but can’t remember. ILI: I like Ike. TKDC: The kids didn’t call. DTLSTY: Does this look swollen to you? CTDMELOFM: Call the doctor—my erection lasted over four minutes. PAMUHNASIHSB: Put a mirror under his nose and see if he’s still breathing. Bottom line: we can’t be dial-up in a Wi-Fi world.
”
”
Billy Crystal (Still Foolin' 'Em: Where I've Been, Where I'm Going, and Where the Hell Are My Keys)
“
I knew chemistry would be worse, because I’d seen a big chart of the ninety-odd elements hung up in the chemistry lab, and all the perfectly good words like gold and silver and cobalt and aluminum were shortened to ugly abbreviations with different decimal numbers after them.
”
”
Sylvia Plath (The Bell Jar)
“
But, by a curious twist, it is not the leadership that is old and decorous that fetches him, but the leadership that is new and extravagant. He will resist dictation out of the past, but he will follow a new messiah with almost Russian willingness, and into the wildest vagaries of economics, religion, morals and speech. A new fallacy in politics spreads faster in the United States than anywhere else on earth, and so does a new fashion in hats, or a new revelation of God, or a new means of killing time, or a new metaphor or piece of slang. Thus the American, on his linguistic side, likes to make his language as he goes along, and not all the hard work of his grammar teachers can hold the business back. A novelty loses nothing by the fact that it is a novelty; it rather gains something, and particularly if it meet the national fancy for the terse, the vivid, and, above all, the bold and imaginative. The characteristic American habit of reducing complex concepts to the starkest abbreviations was already noticeable in colonial times, [Pg023] and such highly typical Americanisms as O. K., N. G., and P. D. Q., have been traced back to the first days of the republic. Nor are the influences that shaped these early tendencies invisible
”
”
H.L. Mencken (The American Language)
“
it was a traumatic time for him, but that’s as far as it goes. There is a blackout—emotional amnesia for any negative memory. It’s how he coped. The pain and the stress and the strain have been deleted. As if it didn’t occur. He remembers uncomplicated, joyful times; sunshine and white sand. The darkness of this memory is mine alone.
”
”
Ariel Leve (An Abbreviated Life: A Memoir)
“
In Greek the name Christ is χριστός (christos). The first letter looks like the English letter X. Every vocation has its shorthand, and those in the church used the letter chi (χ) to represent Christ in words that began with “Christ-.” So “Xmas” is an honorable abbreviation for Christmas. It was not intended to take Christ out of Christmas
”
”
Warren W. Wiersbe (C Is for Christmas: The History, Personalities, and Meaning of Christ's Birth)
“
We found time for less serious things that summer, such as long hours spent playing games like Monopoly, Parcheesi, and Yacht. Peter came honestly by his honorary title of GGP—abbreviation for Great Game Player, bestowed on him by my young brother and sister. My family thought it would look impressive on his church bulletin—thus, “Peter Marshall, DD, GGP.” The day of our wedding saw a cold rain falling, “an ideal day for staying home and playing games,” Peter said. It was indeed. During the morning, I put the finishing touches to my veil and wrestled with a new influx of wedding gifts swathed in tons of tissue paper and excelsior. I gathered the impression that Peter was rollicking through successive games of Yacht, Parcheesi, and Rummy with anyone who had sufficient leisure to indulge him. That was all right, but I thought he was carrying it a bit too far when, thirty minutes before the ceremony, he was so busy pushing his initial advantage in a game of Chinese Checkers with my little sister Em that he still had not dressed.
”
”
Catherine Marshall (A Man Called Peter)
“
Passing pedestrians pay no attention to me. I am no one. Just another crying woman wandering in Manhattan
”
”
Ariel Leve (An Abbreviated Life: A Memoir)
“
Ricin is classed as a ribosome-inhibiting protein, which is abbreviated to RIP.
”
”
Kathryn Harkup (A is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie)
“
Children who are exposed to trauma and stressful situations become hypervigilant as adults. So they’re always scanning, looking for danger.
”
”
Ariel Leve (An Abbreviated Life: A Memoir)
“
What she missed out on and what I missed out on, too. I am grieving for someone who is still alive.
”
”
Ariel Leve (An Abbreviated Life: A Memoir)
“
Solitary confinement, with company.
”
”
Ariel Leve (An Abbreviated Life: A Memoir)
“
WE ARE NOT calling it brain damage. We are calling it an altered brain. A brain that was denied nutrients such as stability that were needed to feel safe and grounded.
”
”
Ariel Leve (An Abbreviated Life: A Memoir)
“
What’s with the phrase “Chatty Cathy”? You’d think you wouldn’t want to abbreviate the derogatory term for someone long-winded. Chatty Catherine sounds more appropriate.
”
”
Jarod Kintz (There are Two Typos of People in This World: Those Who Can Edit and Those Who Can't)
“
the code had to be written in a “hexadecimal” notation, in which the numbers 10 through 15 were abbreviated by the letters F, G, J, K, Q,
”
”
M. Mitchell Waldrop (The Dream Machine)
“
Ad hominem: An abbreviation for argumentum ad hominem, meaning an argument against an idea or statement based on the character of the person who authored it. It is sometimes used to discredit a philosophy of life proclaimed by someone who does not live up to it himself, as in, “He talks the talk, but he doesn’t walk the walk, so I’m not listening to his advice.
”
”
Daniel Klein (Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It: Wisdom of the Great Philosophers on How to Live)
“
Attempting to Soar"
A boy from Brooklyn used to cruise on summer nights.
As soon as he’d hit sixty he’d hold his hand out the window,
cupping it around the wind. He’d been assured
this is exactly how a woman’s breast feels when you put
your hand around it and apply a little pressure. Now he knew,
and he loved it. Night after night, again and again, until
the weather grew cold and he had to roll the window up.
For many years afterwards he was perpetually attempting
to soar. One winter’s night, holding his wife’s breast
in his hand, he closed his eyes and wanted to weep.
He loved her, but it was the wind he imagined now.
As he grew older, he loved the word etcetera and refused
to abbreviate it. He loved sweet white butter. He often
pretended to be playing the organ. On one of his last mornings,
he noticed the shape of his face molded in the pillow.
He shook it out, but the next morning it reappeared.
”
”
Mary Ruefle
“
Despite its abbreviated length, February's always struck me as an especially bleak month, at least in these parts. I know it's not the darkest month, and I know it's not the coldest or the snowiest month, but February is gray in a way I can't explain. In February, all the big happy holidays are gone, and it's weeks and weeks -months, even- until Easter and spring.
”
”
John Langan
“
Margaret laughed. “Sure thing. Sorry, Ave. I’ll go and get the tea.” Ave. If Avice had been feeling less awful, she would have corrected her: there was nothing worse than an abbreviated name.
”
”
Jojo Moyes (The Ship of Brides)
“
I mean, that’s at least in part why I ingested chemical waste—it was a kind of desire to abbreviate myself. To present the CliffsNotes of the emotional me, as opposed to the twelve-volume read.
”
”
Carrie Fisher (Wishful Drinking)
“
Ours is an age of onrushing turbo-capitalism, wherein the present feels more abbreviated than it used to be – at least for the world's privileged classes who live surrounded by technological time-savers that often compound the sensation of not having enough time. Consequently, one of the most pressing challenges of our age is how to adjust rapidly eroding attention spans to the slow erosions of environmental justice. If, under neoliberalism, the gulf between the enclaved rich and outcast poor has become ever more pronounced, ours is also an era of enclaved time wherein for many speed has become self-justifying, propulsive ethic that renders "uneventful" violence (to those who live remote from its attritional lethality) a weak claimant on our time. The attosecond pace of our age, with its restless technologies of infinite promise and infinite disappointment, prompts us to keep flicking and clicking distractedly in an insatiable –often insensate– quest for quicker sensation".
”
”
Rob Nixon (Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor)
“
WHAT CONNECTS US are the basics, tenets of normalcy I never had. Need is redefined. Pots and pans, knives and dish towels, bed linens and bath mats don’t have to match. They don’t have to even exist.
”
”
Ariel Leve (An Abbreviated Life: A Memoir)
“
Physics made me sick the whole time I learned it. What I couldn't stand was this shrinking everything into letters and numbers...I knew chemistry would be worse, because I'd seen a big chart of the ninety-odd elements hung up in the chemistry lab, and all of the perfectly good words like gold and silver and cobalt and aluminum were shortened to ugly abbreviations with different decimal numbers after them.
”
”
Sylvia Plath (The Bell Jar)
“
1. a.Never throw shit at an armed man.
b.Never stand next to someone who
is throwing shit at an armed man.
2.Never fire a laser at a mirror.
3.Mother Nature doesn't care if you're having fun.
4.F × S = k. The product of Freedom and Security is a constant. To gain more freedom of thought and/or action, you must give up some security, and vice versa.
5.Psi and/or magical powers, if real, are nearly useless.
6.It is easier to destroy than create.
7.Any damn fool can predict the past.
8.History never repeats itself.
9.Ethics change with technology.
10.There Ain't No Justice. (often abbreviated to TANJ)
11.Anarchy is the least stable of social structures. It falls apart at a touch.
12.There is a time and place for tact. And there are times when tact is entirely misplaced.
13.The ways of being human are bounded but infinite.
14.The world's dullest subjects, in order:
a.Somebody else's diet.
b.How to make money for a worthy cause.
c.The Kardashians.
15.The only universal message in science fiction: There exist minds that think as well as you do, but differently.
Niven's corollary: The gene-tampered turkey you're talking to isn't necessarily one of them.
16.Fuzzy Pink Niven's Law: Never waste calories.
17.There is no cause so right that one cannot find a fool following it.
in variant form in Fallen Angels as "Niven's Law: No cause is so noble that it won't attract fuggheads."
18.No technique works if it isn't used.
19.Not responsible for advice not taken.
20.Old age is not for sissies.
”
”
Larry Niven
“
...your zeal to face life's rough and tumble, your ardor to accept the responsibilities of adulthood is hardly congruent with the aspirations of most graduate students...' He shook his head of disagreeable hair. 'I need not tell you,' he deplored, sinking to paralipsis, 'that there resides in almost every one of 'em the unconscious desire not to grow up. For once the academic goal is attained and the doctorate irradicably abbreviated after the name, the problem of facing the world is confronted. The subtlest, most unremitting drive of the student is his unconscious proclivity to postpone the acceptance of responsibility as long as possible.
”
”
Millard Kaufman
“
They say that February is the shortest month, but you know they could be wrong.
Compared, calendar page against calendar page, it looks to be the shortest, all right. Spread between January and March like lard on bread, it fails to reach the crust on either slice. In its galoshes it's a full head shorter than December, although in leap years, when it has growth spurts, it comes up to April's nose.
However more abbreviated than it's cousins it may look, February feels longer than any of them. It is the meanest moon of winter, all the more cruel because it will masquerade as spring, occasionally for hours at a time, only to rip off its mask with a sadistic laugh and spit icicles into every gullible face, behavior that grows quickly old.
February is pitiless, and it's boring. That parade of red numerals on its page adds up to zero: birthdays of politicians, a holiday reserved for rodents, what kind of celebrations are those? The only bubble in the flat champagne of February is Valentine's Day. It was no accident that our ancestors pinned Valentine's day on February's shirt: he or she lucky enough to have a lover in frigid, antsy February has cause for celebration, indeed.
Except to the extent that it "tints the buds and swells the leaves within" February is as useless as the extra r in its name. It behaves like an obstacle, a wedge of slush and mud and ennui holding both progress and contentment at bay.
If February is the color of lard on rye, its aroma is that of wet wool trousers. As for sound, it is an abstract melody played on a squeaky violin, the petty whine of a shrew with cabin fever. O February, you may be little but you're small! Where you twice your tiresome length, few of us would survive to greet the merry month of May.
”
”
Tom Robbins
“
is possible, too, that OK has its origins in the Wolof waw kay. That said, the expression has also been claimed as Greek, Finnish, Gaelic, Choctaw and French; as an abbreviation of the faintly humorous misspelling Orl Korrect or of Obediah Kelly, the name of a freight agent who initialled documents he’d checked; and as an inversion of the boxing term KO (knock-out), used because a boxer who hadn’t been knocked out was considered to be … well, OK.
”
”
Henry Hitchings (The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English)
“
What Disneyland proposes is a technique of abbreviated shorthand culture for the masses, a mindless thrill, like an electric shock, that insists at the same time on the recipient's rich psychic relation to his country's history and language and literature. In a forthcoming time of highly governed masses in an overpopulated world, this technique may be extremely useful both as a substitute for education and, eventually, as a substitute for experience.
”
”
E.L. Doctorow (The Book of Daniel)
“
The problem with this abbreviated analysis is that violent crime is not responsible for mass incarceration. As numerous researchers have shown, violent crime rates have fluctuated over the years and bear little relationship to incarceration rates—which have soared during the past three decades regardless of whether violent crime was going up or down.23 Today violent crime rates are at historically low levels, yet incarceration rates continue to climb.
”
”
Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness)
“
At school, my religious-education teacher expressly forbade us to write "Xmas." It was regarded as a foul blasphemy. How would I like it if people used an anonymous X in place of my name? However, it would seem that the word "Xmas" is not blasphemous after all.
In the original Greek, "Christ" was written "Xristos," but the X isn't the Roman "ecks"; The Cassell Dictionary of Word Histories explains that it is the Greek letter "chi" (pronounced with a k to rhyme with "eye"--k'eye). The x is simply a stand-in for "the first letter of Greek Khristos--Christ." Indeed, the Chi-Rho (CH-r--the first two syllables of "Christ") illumination can be seen in the ancient Irish manuscript of the Gospels, The Book of Kells, which is housed at Trinity College in Dublin. This work dates back to the ninth century.
Of course, strictly speaking, Xmas" should still be pronounced "Christmas" because it's an abbreviation, not an alternative word.
”
”
Andrea Barham (The Pedant's Revolt : Why Most Things You Think Are Right Are Wrong)
“
a story in its entirety, but to tell an inevitably abbreviated version in the most interesting way one could. Giving shape and direction to something otherwise formless and elastic. Cause and effect. Action and reaction. Lede and kicker.
”
”
Janelle Brown (Watch Me Disappear)
“
THOMAS JEFFERSON LEFT POSTERITY an immense correspondence, and I am particularly indebted to The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, published by Princeton University Press and first edited by Julian P. Boyd. I am, moreover, grateful to the incumbent editors of the Papers, especially general editor Barbara B. Oberg, for sharing unpublished transcripts of letters gathered for future volumes. The goal of the Princeton edition was, and continues to be, “to present as accurate a text as possible and to preserve as many of Jefferson’s distinctive mannerisms of writing as can be done.” To provide clarity and readability for a modern audience, however, I have taken the liberty of regularizing much of the quoted language from Jefferson and from his contemporaries. I have, for instance, silently corrected Jefferson’s frequent use of “it’s” for “its” and “recieve” for “receive,” and have, in most cases, expanded contractions and abbreviations and followed generally accepted practices of capitalization.
”
”
Jon Meacham (Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power)
“
Oedipus Rex vs. Tyrannosaurus Rex
Oedipus Rex, a tragedy by Sophocles, chronicles the story of Oedipus, a man who becomes the king of Thebes while in the process unwittingly fulfilling a prophecy that he would murder his pops Laius and marry his mom Jocasta.
Tyrannosaurus Rex , commonly abbreviated to T. Rex, was a big fucking dinosaur that kicked ass during the Jurassic period.
My point?
My point is there doesn't have to be a point if you have
already hooked the reader with a catchy title.
And the winner is...
Steven Spielberg
”
”
Beryl Dov
“
Small quantities of non-weapons-grade radioactive plutonium can be used to power radioisotope thermoelectric generators (sensibly abbreviated as RTGs) for spacecraft that travel to the outer solar system, where the intensity of sunlight has diminished below the level usable by solar panels. One pound of plutonium will generate a half million kilowatt-hours of heat energy, enough to continuously power a household blender for a hundred years, or a human being for five times as long, if we ran on nuclear fuel instead of grocery-store food.
”
”
Neil deGrasse Tyson (Astrophysics for People in a Hurry (Astrophysics for People in a Hurry Series))
“
But this intensity of his physical prostration did but so much the more abbreviate it. In an instant's compass, great hearts sometimes condense to one deep pang, the sum total of those shallow pains kindly diffused through feebler men's whole lives. And so, such hearts, though summary in each one suffering; still, if the gods decree it, in their life-time aggregate a whole age of woe, wholly made up of instantaneous intensities; for even in their pointless centres, those noble natures contain the entire circumferences of inferior souls.
”
”
Herman Melville (Moby-Dick or, the Whale)
“
One common abbreviation used in Roman letters was SPD, which was short for salutem plurimam dicit, or “sends many greetings.” This served as a greeting at the beginning of a letter, to indicate the sender and the receiver, as in “Marcus Sexto SPD” (“Marcus sends many greetings to Sextus”). Another popular acronym was SVBEEV, which was short for si vales, bene est, ego valeo (“if you are well, that is good, I am well”). Such abbreviations saved space and time, just as acronyms (BTW, AFAIK, IANAL) do today in Internet posts and text messages.
”
”
Tom Standage (Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2,000 Years)
“
My several years in the word game have learnt me several rules:
(1) Avoid alliteration. Always
(2) Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
(3) Avoid clichés like the plague. (They're old hat.)
(4) Employ the vernacular.
(5) Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
(6) Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
(7) It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
(8) Contractions aren't necessary.
(9) Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
(10) One should never generalize.
(11) Eliminate quotations. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
(12) Comparisons are as bad as clichés.
(13) Don't be redundant; don't use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.
(14) Profanity sucks.
(15) Be more or less specific.
(16) Understatement is always best.
(17) Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
(18) One-word sentences? Eliminate.
(19) Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
(20) The passive voice is to be avoided.
(21) Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
(22) Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
(23) Who needs rhetorical questions?
”
”
Frank L. Visco
“
It's pretty simple for me, really. I want to be able to carry a gun; listen to whatever music I like; eat, drink and be merry; and not hurt anyone else (the exception, obviously, being self-defense). It's the abbreviated Sermon on the Mount: treat other people the way you want to be treated.
”
”
Dave Mustaine (Mustaine: A Heavy Metal Memoir)
“
You sick SOB! You owe me a Bible, MF-er!” His angry, abbreviated expletives drew huge laughter from everyone on the bus. Turns out I had been rolling joints with pages torn from one of his personal Bibles. I’d not known where the book had come from and used it because it was all I could find.
”
”
Mark Lanegan (Sing Backwards and Weep)
“
Though the tendency to tic is innate in Tourette's, the particular form of tics often has a personal or historical origin. Thus a name, a sound, a visual image, a gesture, perhaps seen years before and forgotten, may first be unconsciously echoed or imitated and then preserved in the stereotypic form of a tic. Such tics are like hieroglyphic, petrified residues of the past and may indeed, with the passage of time, become so hieroglyphic, so abbreviated, as to become unintelligible (as 'God be with you' was condensed, collapsed, after centuries, to the phonetically similar but meaningless 'goodbye').
”
”
Oliver Sacks (An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales)
“
When the members of the Frontiers of Science discussed physics, they often used the abbreviation “SF.” They didn’t mean “science fiction,” but the two words “shooter” and “farmer.” This was a reference to two hypotheses, both involving the fundamental nature of the laws of the universe. In the shooter hypothesis, a good marksman shoots at a target, creating a hole every ten centimeters. Now suppose the surface of the target is inhabited by intelligent, two-dimensional creatures. Their scientists, after observing the universe, discover a great law: “There exists a hole in the universe every ten centimeters.” They have mistaken the result of the marksman’s momentary whim for an unalterable law of the universe. The farmer hypothesis, on the other hand, has the flavor of a horror story: Every morning on a turkey farm, the farmer comes to feed the turkeys. A scientist turkey, having observed this pattern to hold without change for almost a year, makes the following discovery: “Every morning at eleven, food arrives.” On the morning of Thanksgiving, the scientist announces this law to the other turkeys. But that morning at eleven, food doesn’t arrive; instead, the farmer comes and kills the entire flock. Wang
”
”
Liu Cixin (The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #1))
“
This accounted not only for the habit of abbreviating whenever possible, but also for the almost exaggerated care that was taken to make every word easily pronounceable. In Newspeak, euphony outweighed every consideration other than exactitude of meaning. Regularity of grammar was always sacrificed to it when it seemed necessary. And rightly so, since what was required, above all for political purposes, were short clipped words of unmistakable meaning which could be uttered rapidly and which roused the minimum of echoes in the speaker’s mind. The words of the B vocabulary even gained in force from the fact that nearly all of them were very much alike. Almost invariably these words—goodthink, Minipax, prolefeed, sexcrime, joy camp, Ingsoc, bellyfeel, thinkpol, and countless others—were words of two or three syllables, with the stress distributed equally between the first syllable and the last. The use of them encouraged a gabbling style of speech, at once staccato and monotonous. And this was exactly what was aimed at. The intention was to make speech, and especially speech on any subject not ideologically neutral, as nearly as possible independent of consciousness. For the purposes of everyday life it was no doubt necessary, or sometimes necessary, to reflect before speaking, but a Party member called upon to make a political or ethical judgment should be able to spray forth the correct opinions as automatically as a machine gun spraying forth bullets. His training fitted him to do this, the language gave him an almost foolproof instrument, and the texture of the words, with their harsh sound and a certain willful ugliness which was in accord with the spirit of Ingsoc, assisted the process still further. So did the fact of having very few words to choose from. Relative to our own, the Newspeak vocabulary was tiny, and new ways of reducing it were constantly being devised.
”
”
George Orwell (1984)
“
Just then a little lady appeared. ‘Who are you?’ said Dorothy. ‘I am the Good Witch of the North,’ the little lady replied, ‘and if you put on the Wicked Witch’s silver shoes . . .’ ‘I’ll look like Lady Gaga.’ ‘. . . you’ll have magic powers. Now where would you like to go?’ ‘Anywhere that Andrew Lloyd Webber is not.
”
”
John Crace (Brideshead Abbreviated: The Digested Read of the Twentieth Century)
“
Pierre de la Vérendrye and his companions had encountered a people blessed with material abundance. “Corn, meat, fat, dressed robes, and bearskins” were all among their riches. “They are well supplied with these things,” the Frenchman wrote. But his abbreviated journal barely mentions the villagers’ equally rich ceremonial life.1
”
”
Elizabeth A. Fenn (Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People)
“
Compliance with legitimate authority was also apparent in the strange case of the “rectal ear ache” (Cohen & Davis, 1981). A doctor ordered eardrops for a patient suffering infection in the right ear. On the prescription, the doctor abbreviated “place in right ear” as “place in R ear.” Reading the order, the compliant nurse put the required drops in the compliant patient’s rectum.
”
”
David G. Myers (Social Psychology)
“
The more dutifully scholars acknowledge that the concept of race belongs in the same category as geocentrism or witchcraft, the more blithely they invoke it as though it were both a coherent analytical category and a valid empirical datum. In place of Jefferson’s moment of impassioned truth-telling, his successors fall back on italics or quotation marks, typographical abbreviations for the trite formula, ‘race is a social construction.’ The formula is meant to spare those who invoke race in historical explanation the raised eyebrows that would greet someone who, studying a crop failure, proposed witchcraft as an independent variable. But identifying race as a social construction does nothing to solidify the intellectual ground on which it totters. The London Underground and the United States of America are social constructions; so are the evil eye and the calling of spirits from the vasty deep; and so are murder and genocide. All derive from the thoughts, plans, and actions of human beings living in human societies. Scholars who intone ‘social construction’ as a spell for the purification of race do not make clear—perhaps because they do not themselves realize—that race and racism belong to different families of social construction, and that neither belongs to the same family as the United States of America or the London Underground. Race belongs to the same family as the evil eye. Racism belongs to the same family as murder and genocide. Which is to say that racism, unlike race, is not a fiction, an illusion, a superstition, or a hoax. It is a crime against humanity.
”
”
Barbara J. Fields (Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life)
“
It is now time to face the fact that English is a crazy language — the most loopy and wiggy of all tongues.
In what other language do people drive in a parkway and park in a driveway?
In what other language do people play at a recital and recite at a play?
Why does night fall but never break and day break but never fall?
Why is it that when we transport something by car, it’s called a shipment, but when we transport something by ship, it’s called cargo?
Why does a man get a hernia and a woman a hysterectomy?
Why do we pack suits in a garment bag and garments in a suitcase?
Why do privates eat in the general mess and generals eat in the private mess?
Why do we call it newsprint when it contains no printing but when we put print on it, we call it a newspaper?
Why are people who ride motorcycles called bikers and people who ride bikes called cyclists?
Why — in our crazy language — can your nose run and your feet smell?Language is like the air we breathe. It’s invisible, inescapable, indispensable, and we take it for granted. But, when we take the time to step back and listen to the sounds that escape from the holes in people’s faces and to explore the paradoxes and vagaries of English, we find that hot dogs can be cold, darkrooms can be lit, homework can be done in school, nightmares can take place in broad daylight while morning sickness and daydreaming can take place at night, tomboys are girls and midwives can be men, hours — especially happy hours and rush hours — often last longer than sixty minutes, quicksand works very slowly, boxing rings are square, silverware and glasses can be made of plastic and tablecloths of paper, most telephones are dialed by being punched (or pushed?), and most bathrooms don’t have any baths in them. In fact, a dog can go to the bathroom under a tree —no bath, no room; it’s still going to the bathroom. And doesn’t it seem a little bizarre that we go to the bathroom in order to go to the bathroom?
Why is it that a woman can man a station but a man can’t woman one, that a man can father a movement but a woman can’t mother one, and that a king rules a kingdom but a queen doesn’t rule a queendom? How did all those Renaissance men reproduce when there don’t seem to have been any Renaissance women?
Sometimes you have to believe that all English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane:
In what other language do they call the third hand on the clock the second hand?
Why do they call them apartments when they’re all together?
Why do we call them buildings, when they’re already built?
Why it is called a TV set when you get only one?
Why is phonetic not spelled phonetically? Why is it so hard to remember how to spell mnemonic? Why doesn’t onomatopoeia sound like what it is? Why is the word abbreviation so long? Why is diminutive so undiminutive? Why does the word monosyllabic consist of five syllables? Why is there no synonym for synonym or thesaurus?
And why, pray tell, does lisp have an s in it?
If adults commit adultery, do infants commit infantry? If olive oil is made from olives, what do they make baby oil from? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian consume? If pro and con are opposites, is congress the opposite of progress? ...
”
”
Richard Lederer
“
Axsem would say nothing more to any of them. No sooner had Fallon released him than he fled deep into the trees, staff in hand, with Hailos following after. Through the morning air, they heard the wail of his mourning. The scarred heart of the general was torn wide open by having to recall even one abbreviated story from his past. He needed time to coddle his mangled heart and push away the torturous memories.
”
”
S.R. Ford (The Kingdom and the Crown (The Kingdom Chronicles, #1))
“
It is wonderful, and rare, being out of the city, being back at their house, and the four of them enjoy one another's company. He even feels well enough to give Andy an abbreviated tour of the property, which Andy has visited only in springtime or summer, but which is different in autumn: raw, sad, lovely, the barn's roof plastered with fallen yellow gingko leaves that make it look as if it's been laid with sheets of gold leaf.
”
”
Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life)
“
THERE ARE STILL days I descend. On these days I am diving alone and no one can reach me. I am out of my depth. I pass twenty meters, pass thirty meters, rapturous with the descent and entering nitrogen narcosis. It’s called the Martini effect. But in this instance, the delirium is not a sensation of drunkenness but of nothingness. I descend with abandon, and there is no limit to how far I will go because the ocean I’m in is bottomless.
”
”
Ariel Leve (An Abbreviated Life: A Memoir)
“
Saunt: (1) In New Orth, a term of veneration applied to great thinkers, almost always posthumously. Note: this word was accepted only in the Millennial Orth Convox of A.R. 3000. Prior to then it was considered a misspelling of Savant. In stone, where only upper-case letters are used, this is rendered SAVANT (or ST. if the stonecarver is running out of space). During the decline of standards in the decades that followed the Third Sack, a confusion between the letters U and V grew commonplace (the “lazy stonecarver problem”), and many began to mistake the word for SAUANT. This soon degenerated to saunt (now accepted) and even sant (still deprecated). In written form, St. may be used as an abbreviation for any of these. Within some traditional orders it is still pronounced “Savant” and obviously the same is probably true among Millenarians. —THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000
”
”
Neal Stephenson (Anathem)
“
MY MOTHER MADE me doubt and question my perceptions. The loving and warm persona that followed the tirades confused and destabilized me. I wanted a witness. An ally. To verify. To have proof. Someone I could turn to and say, “This happened, didn’t it?” Someone who could see the transformation I saw. “I have a right to be angry, don’t I? I don’t trust her,” I say. Only I didn’t say this. Because I was seven years old and I didn’t know yet that’s how I felt. And not trusting one’s mother is, on a cellular level, unjust. I needed to be heard and kept hoping she would hear me. As a child, it was too overwhelming to believe that she couldn’t recognize reality. My craving for her to be different was powerful. It inoculated me against the tumult. I descended deep within myself, far away to a place in the future. Where things would make sense and right was right and wrong was wrong. I was able to crawl away from my rage. But I never crawled away far enough.
”
”
Ariel Leve (An Abbreviated Life: A Memoir)
“
In the center of the room Sarra the demon hung upside down by one leg, its arms bound behind its back, its suit scuffed-looking. Beneath it, crawling around an intricately scribed circle, a woman with short, curly red hair drew binding symbols with a gold stick.
She looked up as I fanned away the smoke that was billowing up from the crack in the tile. "You're a Summoner. Hullo. I'm Noelle. Did you know that you have mismatched eyes?"
I walked around the demon. It glared at me. "Yes, I know. Why do you have Sarra strung up by one leg?"
She drew another symbol. It flared bright green as soon as the stick lifted from the circle. "It was getting a bit stroppy with me. The Hanged Man always teaches them a few manners. It's retaliating with the smoke. Are those spirits I saw yours, then?"
"Yes, they are. There are four others as well. I hate to be a bother, but I'm in a bit of a hurry, what with Christian being held by this one's master and all, so if you could possibly just give me the abbreviated version of what's going on here, I'll be on my way to rescue him."
She leaned back on her heels and sucked the tip of her gold stick. "Asmodeus, eh?"
The demon snarled. A chunk of ceiling fell behind me. We both ignored it. It just never does to give a demon the satisfaction of knowing it's startled you.
"It's a nasty bag of tricks, but I heard through the demonic grapevine that it was weakened and searching for a suitable sacrifice to regain its power," she added.
"Well, it can't have Christian; he's mine. Back to the demon, if you don't mind…"
She looked up at Sarra, still sucking the stick. "It's a pretty specimen, isn't it? I like the hair gel. Nice touch. The mustache is a bit much, though, don't you think? Makes it look so smarmy."
"Um…"
"I'm destroying it, so I suppose it really doesn't matter."
I blinked and avoided two wine bottles as they flew out of a rack when the demon hissed at the Guardian.
”
”
Katie MacAlister (Sex and the Single Vampire (Dark Ones #2))
“
The new soup is the soup of human culture. We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. ‘Mimeme’ comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like ‘gene’. I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to meme.* If it is any consolation, it could alternatively be thought of as being related to ‘memory’, or to the French word même. It should be pronounced to rhyme with ‘cream’.
”
”
Richard Dawkins (The Selfish Gene)
“
In April 2004, Google had one of its countless minicrises, over an anti-Semitic website called Jew Watch. When someone typed “Jew” into Google’s search box, the first result was often a link to that hate site. Critics urged Google to exclude it in its search results. Brin publicly grappled with the dilemma. His view on what Google should do—maintain the sanctity of search—was rational, but a tremor in his voice betrayed how much he was troubled that his search engine was sending people to a cesspool of bigotry. “My reaction was to be really upset about it,” he admitted at the time. “It was certainly not something I want to see.” Then he launched into an analysis of why Google’s algorithms yielded that result, mainly because the signals triggered by the keyword “Jew” reflected the frequent use of that abbreviation as a pejorative. The algorithms had spoken, and Brin’s ideals, no matter how heartfelt, could not justify intervention. “I feel like I shouldn’t impose my beliefs on the world,” he said. “It’s a bad technology practice.
”
”
Steven Levy (In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives)
“
Two Last Thoughts If you had to boil this book down to a single phrase, it would be “It’s complicated.” Nothing seems to cause anything; instead everything just modulates something else. Scientists keep saying, “We used to think X, but now we realize that …” Fixing one thing often messes up ten more, as the law of unintended consequences reigns. On any big, important issue it seems like 51 percent of the scientific studies conclude one thing, and 49 percent conclude the opposite. And so on. Eventually it can seem hopeless that you can actually fix something, can make things better. But we have no choice but to try. And if you are reading this, you are probably ideally suited to do so. You’ve amply proven you have intellectual tenacity. You probably also have running water, a home, adequate calories, and low odds of festering with a bad parasitic disease. You probably don’t have to worry about Ebola virus, warlords, or being invisible in your world. And you’ve been educated. In other words, you’re one of the lucky humans. So try. Finally, you don’t have to choose between being scientific and being compassionate. Abbreviations in the Notes In order to save forests’ worth of paper, references cite only the first one or two authors.
”
”
Robert M. Sapolsky (Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst)
“
They met near the southern limit of the establishment grounds and for a while they spoke in an abbreviated and Aesopic language. They understood each other well, with many decades of communication behind them, and it was not necessary for them to involve themselves in all the elaboration's of human speech.
Daneel said in an all but unhearable whisper, "Clouds. Unseen."
Had Daneel been speaking for human ears, he would have said, "As you see, friend Giskard, the sky has clouded up. Had Madam Gladia waited her chance to see Solaria, she would not, in any case, have succeeded."
And Giskard's reply of "Predicted. Interview, rather," was the equivalent of "So much was predicted in the weather forecast, friend Daneel, and might have been used as an excuse to get Madam Gladia to bed early. It seemed to me to be more important, however, to meet the problem squarely and to persuade her to permit this interview I have already told you about.
”
”
Isaac Asimov (Robots and Empire (Robot, #4))
“
In Fleury’s day, however, the grass was cut and the graves well cared for. Besides, as you might expect, he was fond of graveyards; he enjoyed brooding in them and letting his heart respond to the abbreviated biographies he found engraved in their stones . . . so eloquent, so succinct! All the same, once he had spent an hour or two pondering by his mother’s grave he decided to call it a day because, after all, one does not want to overdo the lurking in graveyards. This decision was not a very sudden one. From the age of sixteen when he had first become interested in books, much to the distress of his father, he had paid little heed to physical and sporting matters. He had been of a melancholy and listless cast of mind, the victim of the beauty and sadness of the universe. In the course of the last two or three years, however, he had noticed that his sombre and tubercular manner was no longer having quite the effect it had once had, particularly on young ladies. They no longer found his pallor so interesting, they tended to become impatient with his melancholy. The effect, or lack of it, that you have on the opposite sex is important because it tells you whether or not you are in touch with the spirit of the times, of which the opposite sex is invariably the custodian. The truth was that the tide of sensitivity to beauty, of gentleness and melancholy, had gradually ebbed leaving Fleury floundering on a sandbank. Young ladies these days were more interested in the qualities of Tennyson’s “great, broad-shouldered, genial Englishman” than they were in pallid poets, as Fleury was dimly beginning to perceive. Louise Dunstaple’s preference for romping with jolly officers which had dismayed him on the day of the picnic had by no means been the first rebuff of this kind. Even Miriam sometimes asked him aloud why he was looking “hangdog” when once she would have remained silent, thinking “soulful”. All
”
”
J.G. Farrell (The Siege of Krishnapur)
“
I'm Gennie." She responded instinctively to the smile Shelby shot her before she untangled herself from her brother. "I'm glad to meet you."
"Pushing seventy,hmmm?" Shelby said cryptically to Grant before she clasped Gennie's hand. "We'll have to get to know each other so you can tell me how you tolerate this jerk's company for more than give minutes at a time. Alan's in the throne room with the MacGregor," she continued before Grant could retort. "Has Grant given you a rundown on the inmates?"
"An abbreviated version," Gennie replied, instantly charmed.
"Typical." She hooked her arm through Gennie's. "Well, sometimes it's best to jump in feetfirst. The most important thing to remember is not to let Daniel intimidate you. What extraction are you?"
"French mostly.Why?"
"It'll come up."
"How was your honeymoon?" Grant demanded, wanting to veer away from the subject that would,indeed, come up.
Shelby beamed at him. "I'll let you know when it's over. How's your cliff?"
"Still standing.
”
”
Nora Roberts (The MacGregors: Alan & Grant (The MacGregors, #3-4))
“
As the crowd looked breathlessly on, Karlstadt read the Mass in an abbreviated form, leaving out the passages about sacrifice to which Luther had so objected. At the consecration, Karlstadt—omitting the elevation of the host—passed from Latin into German. For the first time in their lives, those present heard in their own language the words “This is the cup of my blood of the new and eternal testament, spirit and secret of the faith, shed for you to the remission of sins.” Each congregant was then invited to commune in both kinds. A hush descended as Christians high and low proceeded to the altar. Instead of receiving the host on the tongue, as was the custom, each was handed a wafer to place on his or her tongue; each was also given the chalice from which to drink. One communicant, on being handed a wafer, trembled so violently that he dropped it. Karlstadt told him to pick it up, but the man was so terrified at the sight of the Lord’s body lying desecrated on the floor that he refused to touch it.
”
”
Michael Massing (Fatal Discord: Erasmus, Luther, and the Fight for the Western Mind)
“
In the course of a short city-block this frantic old woman frenetically caricatured the features of forty or fifty passers-by, in a quick-fire sequence of kaleidoscopic imitations, each lasting a second or two, sometimes less, and the whole dizzying sequence scarcely more than two minutes.
And there were ludicrous imitations of the second and third order; for the people in the street, startled, outraged, bewildered by her imitations, took on these expressions in reaction to her; and those expressions, in turn, were re-reflected, re-directed, re-distorted, by the Touretter, causing a still greater degree of outrage and shock. This grotesque, involuntary resonance, or mutuality, by which everyone was drawn into an absurdly amplifying interaction, was the source of the disturbance I had seen from a distance. This woman who, becoming everybody, lost her own self, became nobody. This woman with a thousand faces, masks, personae- how must it be for her in this whirlwind of identities? The answer came soon- and not a second too late; for the build-up of pressures, both hers and others’, was fast approaching the point of explosion. Suddenly, desperately, the old woman turned aside, into an alley-way which led off the main street. And there, with all the appearances of a woman violently sick, she expelled, tremendously accelerated and abbreviated, all the gestures, the postures, the expressions, the demeanours, the entire behavioural repertoires, of the past forty or fifty people she had passed. She delivered one vast, pantomimic egurgitation, in which the engorged identities of the last fifty people who had possessed her were spewed out. And if the taking-in had lasted two minutes, the throwing-out was a single exhalation- fifty people in ten seconds, a fifth of a second or less for the time-foreshortened repertoire of each person.
I was later to spend hundreds of hours, talking to, observing, taping, learning from, Tourette patients. Yet nothing, I think, taught me as much, as swiftly, as penetratingly, as overwhelmingly as that phantasmagoric two minutes in a New York street.
”
”
Oliver Sacks (The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales)
“
We wanted Penny to work somewhere that was pedestrian and wonderfully quotidian. Here are these guys who are trying to unravel the secrets of the universe, and Penny introduces herself by saying, “I work at The Cheesecake Factory.” The juxtaposition of scientists working in the quantum field, perhaps changing the world with their work, and “I work at The Cheesecake Factory” seemed to be a funny dichotomy. And the cheesecake is great! I personally really love their chocolate chip cheesecake. And the menu went on for days—it was like a book! There was a lot going for it, and the company was very gracious about letting us use their name. Surprisingly, the California Institute of Technology (abbreviated as Caltech) wasn’t as enthusiastic when it came to establishing Sheldon and Leonard’s workplace. Chuck Lorre: Caltech wasn’t keen on us using their name or likeness early on, so we obliged for a while, and then when the show took off, they communicated with us again and said something along the lines of, “Please feel free to use the word Caltech in your show,” because it was a good promotion for Caltech! [Laughs] Someone over there recognized that being associated with this burgeoning hit show was not going to damage their reputation.
”
”
Jessica Radloff (The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series)
“
His warm tickling fingers stroked against her like the idle sway of river reeds... cunning fingertips that quickly discovered where she most wanted them. He toyed with her, parting her, slowly investigating the cambered softness and the sensitive places within. Blindly she reached down to grip his stronger wrist, feeling the intricate movements of bone and tendon. He slid two fingers inside her, his thumb gliding over her sex in tender circles.
The water sloshed in the tub as she began to push up rhythmically, urging herself into his hand. A third finger worked inside, and she tightened and gasped out a protest- it was too much, she couldn't- but he whispered that she could, she must, and he stretched her carefully and took her groans into his mouth.
Splayed and floating, Win felt herself loosening, opening to the sensuality of the fingers reaching inside her. She felt greedy and wild, undulating to capture more of the obliterating pleasure. She actually clawed him a little, her hands scrabbling against his hard, bare skin, and he growled as if it pleased him. An abbreviated cry left her lips at the first shock of release. She tried to stifle it, but another was torn from her, and another, and the bathwater rippled as she shuddered, the climax lengthened by the delicately emphatic thrusting that continued until she was limp and panting.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Seduce Me at Sunrise (The Hathaways, #2))
“
If my opinion that substance requires a true unity were founded only on a definition I had formulated in opposition to common usage, *then the dispute would be only one of words*. But besides the fact that most philosophers have taken the term in almost the same fashion, distinguishing between a unity in itself and an accidental unity, between substantial and accidental form, and between perfect and imperfect, natural and artificial mixtures, I take things to a much higher level, and setting aside the question of terminology, *I believe that where there are only beings by aggregation, there aren't any real beings*. For every being by aggregation presupposes beings endowed with real unity, because every being derives its reality only from the reality of those beings of which it is composed, so that it will not have any reality at all if each being of which it is composed is itself a being by aggregation, a being for which we must still seek further grounds for its reality, grounds which can never be found in this way, if we must always continue to seek for them. I agree, Sir, that there are only machines (that are often animated) in all of corporeal nature, but I do not agree that *there are only aggregates of substances, there must also be true substances from which all the aggregates result.
We must, then, necessarily come down to the atoms of Epicurus and Cordemoy (which are things you reject along with me), or else we must admit that we do not find any reality in bodies; or finally, we must recognize some substances that have a true unity. I have already said in another letter that the composite made up of the diamonds of the Grand Duke and of the Great Mogul can be called a pair of diamonds, but this is only a being of reason. And when they are brought closer to one another, it would be a being of the imagination or perception, that is to say, a phenomenon. For contact, common motion, and participation in a common plan have no effect on substantial unity. It is true that there are sometimes more, sometimes fewer, grounds for supposing that several things constitute a single thing, in proportion to the extent to which these things are connected. But this serves only to abbreviate our thoughts and to represent the phenomena.
It also seems that what constitutes the essence of a being by aggregation is only a mode (*maniére d'être*) of the things of which it is composed. For example, what constitutes the essence of an army is only a mode of the men who compose it. This mode therefore presupposes a substance whose essence is not a mode of substance. Every machine also presupposes some substance in the pieces of which it is made, and there is no plurality without true unities. To put it briefly, I hold this identical proposition, differentiated only by the emphasis, to be an axiom, namely, *that what is not truly* one *being is not truly one* being *either*. It has always been thought that one and being are reciprocal things. Being is one thing and beings are another; but the plural presupposes the singular, and where there is no being still less will there be several beings. What could be clearer? [[I therefore believed that I would be allowed to distinguish beings by aggregation from substances, since these beings have their unity in our mind only, a unity founded on the relations or modes [*modes*] of true substances. If a machine is one substance, a circle of men holding hands will also be one substance, and so will an army, and finally, so will every multitude of substances.]]."
—from_Letters to Arnauld_
”
”
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
“
If my opinion that substance requires a true unity were founded only on a definition I had formulated in opposition to common usage, *then the dispute would be only one of words*. But besides the fact that most philosophers have taken the term in almost the same fashion, distinguishing between a unity in itself and an accidental unity, between substantial and accidental form, and between perfect and imperfect, natural and artificial mixtures, I take things to a much higher level, and setting aside the question of terminology, *I believe that where there are only beings by aggregation, there aren't any real beings*. For every being by aggregation presupposes beings endowed with real unity, because every being derives its reality only from the reality of those beings of which it is composed, so that it will not have any reality at all if each being of which it is composed is itself a being by aggregation, a being for which we must still seek further grounds for its reality, grounds which can never be found in this way, if we must always continue to seek for them. I agree, Sir, that there are only machines (that are often animated) in all of corporeal nature, but I do not agree that *there are only aggregates of substances, there must also be true substances from which all the aggregates result.
We must, then, necessarily come down to the atoms of Epicurus and Cordemoy (which are things you reject along with me), or else we must admit that we do not find any reality in bodies; or finally, we must recognize some substances that have a true unity. I have already said in another letter that the composite made up of the diamonds of the Grand Duke and of the Great Mogul can be called a pair of diamonds, but this is only a being of reason. And when they are brought closer to one another, it would be a being of the imagination or perception, that is to say, a phenomenon. For contact, common motion, and participation in a common plan have no effect on substantial unity. It is true that there are sometimes more, sometimes fewer, grounds for supposing that several things constitute a single thing, in proportion to the extent to which these things are connected. But this serves only to abbreviate our thoughts and to represent the phenomena.
It also seems that what constitutes the essence of a being by aggregation is only a mode (*maniére d'être*) of the things of which it is composed. For example, what constitutes the essence of an army is only a mode of the men who compose it. This mode therefore presupposes a substance whose essence is not a mode of substance. Every machine also presupposes some substance in the pieces of which it is made, and there is no plurality without true unities. To put it briefly, I hold this identical proposition, differentiated only by the emphasis, to be an axiom, namely, *that what is not truly* one *being is not truly one* being *either*. It has always been thought that one and being are reciprocal things. Being is one thing and beings are another; but the plural presupposes the singular, and where there is no being still less will there be several beings. What could be clearer? [[I therefore believed that I would be allowed to distinguish beings by aggregation from substances, since these beings have their unity in our mind only, a unity founded on the relations or modes [*modes*] of true substances. If a machine is one substance, a circle of men holding hands will also be one substance, and so will an army, and finally, so will every multitude of substances.]]."
—from_Letters to Arnauld_
”
”
Huston Smith
Manual GR Tester (Abbreviation Union is strength)
“
The Moon child saw the blue diabolo in a matter of Time.
”
”
Petra Hermans
“
I’m Hiro Protagonist. You got my message, I take it.” “Fabu!” Sushi K cries, using the Nipponese abbreviation of the all-purpose Hollywood adjective “fabulous
”
”
Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash)
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a seven-letter Latin abbreviation that was as widely used in antiquity as “R.I.P.” (“Rest in Peace,” itself from the Latin requiescat in pace) has been in the modern world. The abbreviation is “n.f. f. n.s. n.c.” Translated, it provides a most trenchant summary of the materialist views endorsed and promoted by Epicurus, Lucretius, and their followers: non fui, fui, non sum, non curo—“I was not. I was. I am not. I care not.
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Bart D. Ehrman (Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife)
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Between the past and the future of an event (for example, between the past and the future for you, where you are, and in the precise moment in which you are reading), there exists an “intermediate zone,” an “extended present”; a zone that is neither past nor future. This is the discovery made with special relativity. The duration of this “intermediate zone,”* which is neither in your past nor in your future, is very small and depends on where an event takes place relative to you, as illustrated in figure 3.2: the greater the distance of the event from you, the longer the duration of the extended present. At a distance of a few meters from your nose, the duration of what for you is the “intermediate zone,” neither past nor future, is no more than a few nanoseconds: next to nothing (the number of nanoseconds in a second is the same as the number of seconds in thirty years). This is much less than we could possibly notice. On the other side of the ocean, the duration of this “intermediate zone” is a thousandth of a second, still well below the threshold of our perception of time, the minimum amount of time we perceive with our senses, which is somewhere on the order of a tenth of a second. But on the moon, the duration of the “extended present” is a few seconds, and on Mars it is a quarter of an hour. This means we can say that on Mars there are events that in this precise moment have already happened, events that are yet to happen, but also a quarter-of-an-hour of events during which things occur that are neither in our past nor in our future. They are elsewhere. We had never before been aware of this “elsewhere” because next to us this “elsewhere” is too brief; we are not quick enough to notice it. But it exists, and is real. This is why it is impossible to hold a smooth conversation between here and Mars. Say I am on Mars and you are here; I ask you a question and you reply as soon as you’ve heard what I said; your reply reaches me a quarter of an hour after I had posed the question. This quarter of an hour is time that is neither past nor future to the moment you’ve replied to me. The key fact that Einstein understood is that this quarter of an hour is inevitable: there is no way of reducing it. It is woven into the texture of the events of space and of time: we cannot abbreviate it, any more than we can send a letter to the past. It’s strange, but this is how the world happens to be.
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Carlo Rovelli (Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity)
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Do you know that chess is actually an abbreviation, a short form of a number of words? Can you guess what the full form is? C - Chariots H - Horses E - Elephants S - Soldier(s) And so, Chaturanga became C-H-E-S-(S).
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Radhakrishnan Pillai (Chanakya in You)
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Abbreviation: N Value: 3 points Movement: L-shape. 2 squares vertically followed by 1 square horizontally. Or, 2 squares horizontally followed by 1 square vertically. A Knight is one of the most versatile and fun pieces you can use.
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5min chess (The Beginner to Winner Chess Opening Formula: Play Better Chess and Win More Games With Proven Opening Principles, Tips and Tactics)
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4. Bishop, the Diagonal Sniper Abbreviation: B Value: 3 points Movement: Any legal distance diagonally. The Bishop ‘the long range sniper’, is never to be underestimated!
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5min chess (The Beginner to Winner Chess Opening Formula: Play Better Chess and Win More Games With Proven Opening Principles, Tips and Tactics)
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The King, May He Live Eternally! Abbreviation: K Value: Priceless (lose the king lose the game) Movement: One square, any legal direction.
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5min chess (The Beginner to Winner Chess Opening Formula: Play Better Chess and Win More Games With Proven Opening Principles, Tips and Tactics)
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It was the same photograph that had been in all the papers eight years ago and that he now used again in his ads: the one he had taken on the café terrace in Paris on the morning before she disappeared, the last picture of her. In seven-eighths profile, she looked at Rex with a knowing smile, as if she had something up her sleeve. The caption read: ...two cans...
Under the title "French Appeal for Missing Girl-friend," the story of her disappearance was told once more, abbreviated, and with a few small errors. They'd gone ahead and quoted the sum he'd supposedly paid for the ads: The price: a cool eighty thousand guilders. He must have gone deep into dept for this. Hoping for what? "Nothing," says Hofman. "It's a tribute.
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Tim Krabbé (Het gouden ei)
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If you don’t run with this crowd, you might assume that SF is an abbreviation of Science Fiction. But here it means Speculative Fiction. This coinage is a way to cope with the problem that Science Fiction is mysteriously, inextricably conjoined with the seemingly unrelated literature of Fantasy. Many who are fond of one are fond of the other, to the point where they perceive them as The Same Thing in spite of the fact that they seem quite different to non-fans.
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Neal Stephenson (Some Remarks: Essays and Other Writing)
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plural n. (usually the DTs) INFORMAL delirium tremens. mid 19th century: abbreviation, originally in the singular form DT (now rare).
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Angus Stevenson (Oxford Dictionary of English)
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We create our own narrative: every typo, every misquoted phrase and poorly thought out abbreviation dictating the arrhythmic flow of each meaningless sentence of our lives.
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Jonathan D. Clark (False Cathedrals)
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We have all heard of the bottom line, but have you heard of the triple bottom line? Abbreviated 3BL, it’s also known as the three pillars or the three Ps: profit, people, and the planet. More companies are adopting the Zero Waste Business Principles developed by ZWIA, principles that encourage looking at resources in new ways.
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Mary Appelhof (Worms Eat My Garbage: How to Set Up and Maintain a Worm Composting System)
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I was struck, during COVID-19’s early months, that America’s Doctor, apparently preoccupied with his single vaccine solution, did little in the way of telling Americans how to bolster their immune response. He never took time during his daily White House briefings from March to May 2020 to instruct Americans to avoid tobacco (smoking and e-cigarettes/vaping double death rates from COVID); to get plenty of sunlight and to maintain adequate vitamin D levels (“Nearly 60 percent of patients with COVID-19 were vitamin D deficient upon hospitalization, with men in the advanced stages of COVID-19 pneumonia showing the greatest deficit”); or to diet, exercise, and lose weight (78 percent of Americans hospitalized for COVID-19 were overweight or obese). Quite the contrary, Dr. Fauci’s lockdowns caused Americans to gain an average of two pounds per month and to reduce their daily steps by 27 percent. He didn’t recommend avoiding sugar and soft drinks, processed foods, and chemical residues, all of which amplify inflammation, compromise immune response, and disrupt the gut biome which governs the immune system. During the centuries that science has fruitlessly sought remedies against coronavirus (aka the common cold), only zinc has repeatedly proven its efficacy in peer-reviewed studies. Zinc impedes viral replication, prophylaxing against colds and abbreviating their duration. The groaning shelves that commercial pharmacies devote to zinc-based cold remedies attest to its extraordinary efficacy. Yet Anthony Fauci never advised Americans to increase zinc uptake following exposure to infection.
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health)
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Bell Labs engineers had become fond of the suffix “-istor”: Small devices known as varistors and thermistors had already become essential components in the phone system’s circuitry. “Transistor,” the memo noted, was “an abbreviated combination of the words ‘transconductance’ or ‘transfer,’ and ‘varistor.
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Jon Gertner (The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation)
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Some well-known acronyms simply don’t work at all. Pin number, for example. Because what you’re actually saying is ‘personal information number number’. It’s the same with those who refer to the HIV virus. Or an ATM machine. Or an LCD display. Or an ISDN network. Then you have abbreviations that are longer to use than the actual words. Worldwide web, for instance, is three syllables, whereas WWW is nine. And why say: ‘Have you RSVPed?’ when you mean ‘Have you replied?’?
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Jeremy Clarkson (Can You Make This Thing Go Faster?)
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The "coincidance" of Michael Cusack and Nicholas of Cusa and John Cusack and Henry Flower across space-time could not have been known in full to Joyce's conscious mind, of course, which is why any theory of Joyce's novels must take into account the reality of the non-local function he abbreviates as .
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Robert Anton Wilson (Coincidance: A Head Test)
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Every view which interprets the symbolic expression as an analogous or abbreviated expression of a known thing is semiotic. A view which interprets the symbolic expression as the best possible formulation of a relatively unknown thing, which for that reason cannot be more clearly or characteristically represented, is symbolic. A view which interprets the symbolic expression as an intentional paraphrase or transmogrification of a known thing is allegoric. The interpretation of the cross as a symbol of divine love is semiotic, because “divine love” describes the fact to be expressed better and more aptly than a cross, which can have many other meanings. On the other hand, an interpretation of the cross is symbolic when it puts the cross beyond all conceivable explanations, regarding it as expressing an as yet unknown and incomprehensible fact of a mystical or transcendent, i.e., psychological, nature, which simply finds itself most appropriately represented in the cross.
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C.G. Jung (Psychological Types)
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The DNA is made up of two opposite spirals, positive and negative, which can easily be considered isomorphic to I Ching's yin () and yang (), or Leibniz's 0 and 1, or Joyce's and . These are bonded by four amino acids—adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine, which are usually abbreviated A, G, C, T. If one dares to consider these isomorphic with active yang (), passive yang (), active yin () and passive yin (), or Leibniz's 01,11,10 and 00, or Joyce's and , then the parallel becomes staggering. In forming RNA messages—the genetic code—the T (thymine) drops out to be replaced by U (uracil) but we still have four elements—A, G, C, U—and if we permutate them by the now-familiar rule, making all possible combinations of three out of these basic four "letters," we get again 43 or 64 "words," which are the 64 elements of the genetic language.
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Robert Anton Wilson (Coincidance: A Head Test)
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MISS, n. The title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate that they are in the market. Miss, Missis (Mrs.) and Mister (Mr.) are the three most distinctly disagreeable words in the language, in sound and sense. Two are corruptions of Mistress, the other of Master. In the general abolition of social titles in this our country they miraculously escaped to plague us. If we must have them let us be consistent and give one to the unmarried man. I venture to suggest Mush, abbreviated to Mh.
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Ambrose Bierce (The Devil's Dictionary)
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The healing process, in my opinion, is carried out via a sequence of processes abbreviated as AIR;
A - Admitting that you're broken.
I - Identifying your shattered and distorted areas
R - Repairing it with a hopeful and constructive attitude.
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Dr. Anhad Kaur Suri
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Short means abbreviated, which indicates the omission of critical details. Truth should be spoken or hidden, never said half free on the careless waggle of a tongue.
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Drew Hayes (The Case of the Haunted Haunted House)
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Sleazy. An abbreviated form of silesia. A linen that took its name from Silesia in Hamborough, and not because it wore sleasy (1696). A piece of Slesey (1706).
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George Francis Dow (Every Day Life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony)
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A faulty understanding of science, along with rigorism and spiritual flattening in religion, termed scientism or biblicism, respectively, have taken hold of the Book of Man and lead in every way to a miserable, indeed abject, conception of History. There has been a will to reduce History to a universal law, on the pattern of the natural sciences (Ultimate Law of History, abbreviated to ULH). Or the revelations of scripture are presumptuously held for a gnomon, the shadow-stick of a sundial allowing calculation of the course of salvific History. The outcome, at best, was loss of meaning and relativism. Novus ordo is the reckoning.
History has its own Universal Formula. This “formula” is not a law, nor a scheme, but an order: Novus ordo.
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Florian Dreveskracht (Novus Ordo: An Introduction to the Apocalypse or Geometry of End Times (Manifesto))
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The key fact that Einstein understood is that this quarter of an hour is inevitable: there is no way of reducing it. It is woven into the texture of the events of space and of time: we cannot abbreviate it, any more than we can send a letter to the past.
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Carlo Rovelli (Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity)
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Online, we easily find “company” but are exhausted by the pressures of performance. We enjoy continual connection but rarely have each other’s full attention. We can have instant audiences but flatten out what we say to each other in new reductive genres of abbreviation. We like it that the Web “knows” us, but this is only possible because we compromise our privacy, leaving electronic bread crumbs that can be easily exploited, both politically and commercially.
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Sherry Turkle (Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other)
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If mention of degrees is necessary to establish someone’s credentials, the preferred form is to avoid an abbreviation and use instead a phrase such as: John Jones, who has a doctorate in psychology.
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Associated Press (The Associated Press Stylebook 2019)
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See, that's the problem with you kids and your iPods and your micropayments - nobody understands the concept of a concept album anymore. Everything's got to be in bite-size pieces. You've got to take a moment to reflect on the fact that it's impossible to say anything meaningful in such an abbreviated form.
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Phillip Andrew Bennett Low (Monsters in a Mirror: Strange Tales from the Chapel Perilous)
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We say that the minor pentatonic scale consists of 5 notes: A Root, a minor 3rd, a Perfect 4th, Perfect 5th, and a minor 7th or (when abbreviated) R, m3, P4, P5, m7
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Nicolas Carter (Music Theory: From Beginner to Expert - The Ultimate Step-By-Step Guide to Understanding and Learning Music Theory Effortlessly (Essential Learning Tools for Musicians Book 1))
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The name of God (3:13-14) may be rendered "I AM WHO I AM," as it is in the NIV, or "I will be what I will be." In Hebrew, the abbreviated form "I am" is related in some fashion to YHWH, often spelled out as Yahweh (and commonly rendered "LORD," in capital letters; the same Hebrew letters stand behind English Jehovah). The least that this name suggests is that God is self-existent, eternal, completely independent, and utterly sovereign: God is what he is, dependent on no one and nothing.
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D.A. Carson (For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word, Volume 1)
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In each prediction about violence, we must ask what the context, stimuli, and developments might mean to the person involved, not just what they mean to us. We must ask if the actor will perceive violence as moving him toward some desired outcome or away from it. The conscious or unconscious decision to use violence, or to do most anything, involves many mental and emotional processes, but they usually boil down to how a person perceives four fairly simple issues: justification, alternatives, consequences, and ability. My office abbreviates these elements as JACA, and an evaluation of them helps predict violence. Perceived Justification (J) Does the person feel justified in using violence? Perceived justification can be as simple as being sufficiently provoked (“Hey, you stepped on my foot!”) or as convoluted as looking for an excuse to argue, as with the spouse that starts a disagreement in order to justify an angry response. The process of developing and manufacturing justification can be observed. A person who is seeking to feel justification for some action might move from “What you’ve done angers me” to “What you’ve done is wrong.” Popular justifications include the moral high ground of righteous indignation and the more simple equation known by its biblical name: an eye for an eye. Anger is a very seductive emotion because it is profoundly energizing and exhilarating. Sometimes people feel their anger is justified by past unfairnesses, and with the slightest excuse, they bring forth resentments unrelated to the present situation. You could say such a person has pre-justified hostility, more commonly known as having a chip on his shoulder. The degree of provocation is, of course, in the eye of the provoked. John Monahan notes that “how a person appraises an event may have a great influence on whether he or she ultimately responds to it in a violent manner.” What he calls “perceived intentionality” (e.g., “You didn’t just bump into me, you meant to hit me”) is perhaps the clearest example of a person looking for justification.
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Gavin de Becker (The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence)
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An abbreviation is a face describing a body.
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Mantaranjot Mangat (Plotless)
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When Ronald Reagan was a radio announcer, he used to call baseball games that he did not physically attend by reading the terse descriptions that trickled in over the telegraph wire and were printed out on a paper tape. He would sit there, all by himself in a padded room with a microphone, and the paper tape would creep out of the machine and crawl over the palm of his hand printed with cryptic abbreviations. If the count went to three and two, Reagan would describe the scene as he saw it in his mind’s eye: “The brawny left-hander steps out of the batter’s box to wipe the sweat from his brow. The umpire steps forward to sweep the dirt from home plate,” and so on. When the cryptogram on the paper tape announced a base hit, he would whack the edge of the table with a pencil, creating a little sound effect, and describe the arc of the ball as if he could actually see it. His listeners, many of whom presumably thought that Reagan was actually at the ballpark watching the game, would reconstruct the scene in their minds according to his descriptions. This is exactly how the World Wide Web works: the HTML files are the pithy description on the paper tape, and your web browser is Ronald Reagan. The same is true of graphical user interfaces in general.
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Neal Stephenson (In the Beginning...Was the Command Line)
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Greasers can’t walk alone too much or they’ll get jumped, or someone will come by and scream “Greaser!” at them, which doesn’t make you feel too hot, if you know what I mean. We get jumped by the Socs. I’m not sure how you spell it, but it’s the abbreviation for the Socials, the jet set, the West-side rich kids. It’s like the term “greaser,” which is used to class all us boys on the East Side.
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S.E. Hinton (The Outsiders)
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The earth formed 4.5 billion years ago with a fixed endowment of carbon. Today, that carbon is found in several different circumstances around the planet—what are called “reservoirs.” The largest reservoir by far is the earth’s crust, which contains almost all of the planet’s carbon, about 1.9 billion gigatons (1 gigaton, abbreviated Gt, is one billion tons).2 The next largest amount, about 40,000 Gt, is in the oceans, almost all of that far below the surface. There are about 2,100 Gt more stored on land in soils and living things, and 5,000–10,000 Gt in fossil fuels underground. The roughly 850 Gt of carbon in the atmosphere, almost all in the form of carbon dioxide, is equal to about 25 percent of the carbon at or near the earth’s surface (in the soils, plants, and shallow ocean) but is only 2 percent of the total carbon in the oceans.
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Steven E. Koonin (Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters)
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On October 28, 2008, when Judge Paulo Micheli found Rudy Guede guilty of the crime of murder, following an abbreviated “fast track” trial, the killer of talented British college student Meredith Kercher was removed from society and placed safely behind bars, where he has resided ever since. That same day, the judge also ordered a case devoid of merit or motive to proceed to full trial against the victim’s American roommate and her Italian boyfriend.
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Douglas Preston (The Forgotten Killer: Rudy Guede and the Murder of Meredith Kercher (Kindle Single))
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To understand a concept or idea better Students new to economics sometimes struggle to grasp the concept of the marginal propensity to consume (abbreviated as MPC). MPC is the proportion of additional disposable income (income after taxes and transfers) that an individual consumes. Even harder to understand is what a specific numerical value for MPC implies. In such situations, it helps to go to extreme cases to gain some intuitive feel for what the numbers mean. In this case, since the MPC is a proportion, the two extremes are 0 and 1. An MPC of 0 means that if an individual received an extra $100 of income, she would spend none of it. Think of Warren Buffett. He already has plenty of money to consume what he wants. If Berkshire Hathaway were to pay him an extra $100, he would not change his consumption. At the other extreme, an MPC of 1 means that if an individual received an extra $100 of disposable income, he would spend it all. Think of someone in extreme poverty. An extra $100 could go immediately to satisfy his basic needs. These extreme cases can help ground our understanding of MPC.[2]
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Dan Levy (Maxims for Thinking Analytically: The wisdom of legendary Harvard Professor Richard Zeckhauser)
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A Day 15 Months In The Making from “The Light Brigade”477 Home Psychotic Home Epilogue APPENDIX Glossary: Acronym, Abbreviation & Jargon Decoder Bibliography We, the unwilling, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, for so long, with so little, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing. ---Mother Teresa
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Darren Shadix (To Quell The Korengal)
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One of the earliest and still fully extant Xiangqi literature was One Hundred Variations in Xiangqi which would be abbreviated as ‘Hundred’ in this book. The author of the book was believed to have been Zu Long Shi (祖龙 氏 zǔ lóng shì)but not much else is known about the author except that he was very enthusiastic about Xiangqi. Please refer to the preface below.
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Jim Hau Cheng Png (Ancient Xiangqi Classics: One Hundred Variations in Xiangqi & Marvelous Variations Xiangqi Manual)
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She was Jennifer C, or, as her second-grade teacher coined it, “Jen C.” There had also been “Jen L.” As second grade went on, the teacher ran the abbreviations together so fast that they came out as one word. So “Jen C” became Jencey, and “Jen L” became Jennelle.
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Marybeth Mayhew Whalen (The Things We Wish Were True)
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Even in the early decades of the twentieth century, telescoped words and phrases had been one of the characteristic features of political language; and it had been noticed that the tendency to use abbreviations of this kind was most marked in totalitarian countries and totalitarian organizations. Examples were such words as Nazi, Gestapo, Comintern, Inprecorr, Agitprop. In the beginning the practice had been adopted as it were instinctively, but in Newspeak it was used with a conscious purpose. It was perceived that in thus abbreviating a name one narrowed and subtly altered its meaning, by cutting out most of the associations that would otherwise cling to it. The words Communist International, for instance, call up a composite picture of universal human brotherhood, red flags, barricades, Karl Marx, and the Paris Commune. The word Comintern, on the other hand, suggests merely a tightly-knit organization and a well-defined body of doctrine. It refers to something almost as easily recognized, and as limited in purpose, as a chair or a table. Comintern is a word that can be uttered almost without taking thought, whereas Communist International is a phrase over which one is obliged to linger at least momentarily.
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George Orwell (Nineteen Eighty-Four)
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I don’t even understand the language properly, all the strange abbreviations and the failure to properly punctuate or use capital letters, emojis scattered across the pages like grapeshot on the screenshots of Facebook messages that comprise one of the files. There must be a key to teen speak, a way of understanding. I grit my teeth and get on with it.
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Harriet Tyce (The Lies You Told)
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ds mnibus: for this phrase, commonly abbreviated D. M., see “Epitaph of a Young Boy,” in Capvt VII.—fcit: sc. id, i.e., the monument.
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Richard A. LaFleur (Scribblers, Sculptors, and Scribes: A Companion to Wheelock's Latin and Other Introductory Textbooks)
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This enigmatic bunker was Hawaii’s codebreaking unit, charged with peeling back the layers of encryption that cloaked Japanese radio communications. Although no sign was posted outside the door, it was formally called the Combat Intelligence Unit, or CIU. Among the staff it was nicknamed “the dungeon.” After a reorganization later in the war it was renamed Fleet Radio Unit, Pacific, abbreviated as FRUPAC. Most commonly (then and in the historical literature) it was known as “Station Hypo”—phonetic code for the letter H, designating the Hawaiian intercept station.
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Ian W. Toll (Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941–1942)