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Keeping Up With The Joneses
"Keeping up with the Joneses" is an idiom in many parts of the English-speaking world referring to the comparison of oneself to one's neighbor, where the neighbor serves as a benchmark for social class or the accumulation of material goods. Failure to "keep up with the Joneses" is perceived as a demonstration of socio-economic or cultural inferiority. The phrase was coined by a 1910s comic strip of the same name.Safire, William (November 15, 1998)"On Language; Up the Down Ladder" ''The New York Times''. Retrieved June 23, 2016. Origins The phrase originates with the comic strip '' Keeping Up with the Joneses'', created by Arthur R. "Pop" Momand in 1913. The strip ran until 1940 in '' The New York World'' and various other newspapers. The strip depicts the social climbing McGinis family, who struggle to "keep up" with their neighbors, the Joneses of the title. The Joneses were unseen characters throughout the strip's run, often spoken of but never shown. The idiom ''keeping u ...
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Idiom
An idiom is a phrase or expression that largely or exclusively carries a Literal and figurative language, figurative or non-literal meaning (linguistic), meaning, rather than making any literal sense. Categorized as formulaic speech, formulaic language, an idiomatic expression's meaning is different from the Literal and figurative language, literal meanings of each word inside it. Idioms occur frequently in all languages. In English language, English alone there are an estimated twenty-five thousand idiomatic expressions. Some well known idioms in English are "spill the beans" (meaning "reveal secret information"), "it's raining cats and dogs" (meaning "it's raining intensely"), and "break a leg" (meaning "good luck"). Derivations Many idiomatic expressions were meant literally in their original use, but occasionally the attribution of the literal meaning changed and the phrase itself grew away from its original roots—typically leading to a folk etymology. For instance, the ...
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Florence Lawrence
Florence Lawrence (born Florence Annie Bridgwood; January 2, 1886 – December 28, 1938) was a Canadian-American stage performer and film actress. She is often referred to as the "first movie star", and was long thought to be the first film actor to be named publicly until evidence published in 2019 indicated that the first named film star was French actor Max Linder. At the height of her fame in the 1910s, she was known as the "Biograph Girl" for work as one of the leading ladies in silent films from the Biograph Company. She appeared in almost 300 films for various motion picture companies throughout her career. Early life Born Florence Annie Bridgwood in Hamilton, Ontario, she was the youngest of three children of George Bridgwood, an English-born carriage builder and Charlotte Bridgwood, Charlotte "Lotta" Bridgwood (née Dunn), a vaudeville actress. Charlotte Bridgwood had emigrated to Canada from Ireland after the Great Famine (Ireland), Great Famine with her family as a ch ...
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Caroline Webster Schermerhorn Astor
Caroline Webster "Lina" Schermerhorn Astor (September 22, 1830 – October 30, 1908) was an American socialite who led the The Four Hundred (1892), Four Hundred, high society of New York City in the Gilded Age. Referred to later in life as "the Mrs. Astor" or simply "Mrs. Astor", she was the wife of yachtsman William Backhouse Astor Jr. They had five children, including Colonel John Jacob Astor IV, who perished on the RMS Titanic, RMS ''Titanic''. Through her marriage, she was a member of the Astor family and matriarch of the American Astors. Early life Caroline Webster Schermerhorn, called "Lina", was born on September 22, 1830, into a wealthy family who were part of New York City's Dutch aristocracy, descendants of the city's original settlers. Her father, Abraham Schermerhorn (1783–1850), and the extended Schermerhorn family were engaged in shipping. At the time of Lina's birth, Abraham was worth half a million dollars (equivalent to $ million in ). Her mother was Helen Va ...
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The Age Of Innocence
''The Age of Innocence'' is a novel by American author Edith Wharton, published on 25 October 1920. It was her eighth novel, and was initially serialized in 1920 in four parts, in the magazine '' Pictorial Review''. Later that year, it was released as a book by D. Appleton & Company. It won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, making Wharton the first woman to win the prize. Though the committee had initially agreed to give the award to Sinclair Lewis for '' Main Street'', the judges, in rejecting his book on political grounds, "established Wharton as the American 'First Lady of Letters. The story is set in the 1870s, in upper-class, "Gilded Age" New York City. Wharton wrote the book in her 50s, after she was already established as a major author in high demand by publishers. Background ''The Age of Innocence'', which was set in the time of Wharton's childhood, than '' The House of Mirth'', which Wharton had published in 1905. In her autobiography, Wharton wrote that ''The ...
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Fifth Avenue
Fifth Avenue is a major thoroughfare in the borough (New York City), borough of Manhattan in New York City. The avenue runs south from 143rd Street (Manhattan), West 143rd Street in Harlem to Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village. The section in Midtown Manhattan is one of the most expensive List of shopping streets and districts by city, shopping streets in the world. Fifth Avenue carries Bidirectional traffic, two-way traffic between 135th Street (Manhattan), 143rd and 135th Streets, and one-way traffic southbound for the rest of its route. The entire avenue carried two-way traffic until 1966. From 124th Street (Manhattan), 124th to 120th Streets, Fifth Avenue is interrupted by Marcus Garvey Park, with southbound traffic diverted around the park via Mount Morris Park West and northbound to Madison Avenue. Most of the avenue has a bus lane, but no bike lane. Fifth Avenue is the traditional route for many celebratory parades in New York City and is closed to automobile tr ...
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Henry Winthrop Sargent
Henry Winthrop Sargent (November 26, 1810 – November 11, 1882), American horticulturist and landscape gardener. Early life Henry Winthrop Sargent was born in Boston, Massachusetts, Boston, the first child of Hannah (Welles) Sargent and artist Henry Sargent (1770–1845), formerly of Gloucester, Massachusetts. His younger brother, John Turner Welles Sargent (1814–1877), was married to Amelia Jackson Holmes (1843–1889), the only daughter of Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. He was the grandson of Daniel Sargent Sr. and Mary (née Turner) Sargent (1744–1813). He was the nephew of author Lucius Manlius Sargent (1786–1867), and merchant Daniel Sargent (politician), Daniel Sargent (1764–1842), who were cousins of American Revolutionary War soldier Paul Dudley Sargent (1745–1828). Sargent was educated at the Boston Latin School and at Harvard College, where he graduated in the class of 1830. Career Sargent studied law in the Boston office of Samuel Hubbard but never practiced ...
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Wyndcliffe
Wyndcliffe is the ruin of a historic mansion near Rhinebeck in Dutchess County, New York. The records at the Library of Congress state that the brick mansion was originally named Rhinecliff and constructed in 1853 in the Norman style. The mansion was built for New York City socialite Elizabeth Schermerhorn Jones (1810-1876) as a weekend and summer residence. The design is attributed to local architect George Veitch. A master mason, John Byrd, executed the highly varied ornamental brickwork using only rectangular and few molded bricks. Writer Edith Wharton was a frequent childhood visitor; it influenced her 1929 novel ''Hudson River Bracketed''. Wharton called the house "Rhinecliff" (after the nearby hamlet of Rhinecliff) in her 1933 memoirs ''A Backwards Glance''; contrary to popular rumor, the hamlet was not named after the house. The phrase "keeping up with the Joneses "Keeping up with the Joneses" is an idiom in many parts of the English-speaking world referring to the ...
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Gothic Architecture
Gothic architecture is an architectural style that was prevalent in Europe from the late 12th to the 16th century, during the High Middle Ages, High and Late Middle Ages, surviving into the 17th and 18th centuries in some areas. It evolved from Romanesque architecture and was succeeded by Renaissance architecture. It originated in the Île-de-France and Picardy regions of northern France. The style at the time was sometimes known as ''opus Francigenum'' (); the term ''Gothic'' was first applied contemptuously during the later Renaissance, by those ambitious to revive the Classical architecture, architecture of classical antiquity. The defining design element of Gothic architecture is the Pointed arch (architecture), pointed arch. The use of the pointed arch in turn led to the development of the pointed rib vault and flying buttresses, combined with elaborate tracery and stained glass windows. At the Abbey of Basilica of Saint-Denis, Saint-Denis, near Paris, the choir was rec ...
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Livingston Family
The Livingston family of New York (state), New York is a prominent family that migrated from Scotland to the Dutch Republic, and then to the Province of New York in the 17th century. Descended from the 4th Lord Livingston, its members included signers of the United States Declaration of Independence (Philip Livingston) and the United States Constitution (William Livingston). Several members were Lord of the Manor, Lords of Livingston Manor and Clermont Manor, located along the Hudson River in 18th-century eastern New York. Overview Descendants of the Livingstons include Presidents of the United States George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush, First Lady of the United States Eleanor Roosevelt, suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Congressman Bob Livingston of Louisiana, much of the wealthy Astor family, New York Governor Hamilton Fish, and actress Jane Wyatt. The eccentric Collyer brothers are alleged to have been descended from the Livingston family. The Livingston family's burial cr ...
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Rhinebeck (village), New York
Rhinebeck is a village (New York), village in the Rhinebeck (town), New York, town of Rhinebeck in Dutchess County, New York, United States. The population was 2,657 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Kiryas Joel–Poughkeepsie–Newburgh metropolitan area as well as the larger New York metropolitan area. The postal ZIP code is 12572. U.S. Route 9 in New York, U.S. Route 9 passes through the village. History Native American presence The Sepasco band of Native Americans lived in the area of today's Rhinebeck at the time white colonists arrived. Sepasco/Sepascot is derived from the word ''sepuus,'' which means little river or stream, and refers to the Landman's Kill stream whose ''cot'' or ''coot'', meaning mouth, opens onto the southwestern shoreline of present-day Rhinebeck. This was the Drainage basin, watershed of the Sepascos. The Sepasco tribe had established a fertile stretch of land as a trail or tract leading from what is currently White School House Road to what ...
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Rhinecliff, New York
Rhinecliff is a hamlet and census-designated place (CDP) located along the Hudson River in the town of Rhinebeck in northern Dutchess County, New York, United States. As of the 2010 census, the population of Rhinecliff was 425. History Today’s Rhinecliff was founded by Europeans in 1686 as the town of ''Kipsbergen'' by five Dutchmen, among them Hendrikus and Jacobus Kip. They moved from Kingston on the west bank to live in the new settlement along the eastern shore of the Hudson. By this time England had already taken over New Netherland, the former Dutch colony that included Manhattan. The Hudson River Railroad's Rhinebeck station opened in 1851 at Slate Dock and was relocated south to Shatzell's Dock the next year. Charles Handy Russell, a real estate developer and owner of the ferry service to Kingston, created a small village around the relocated station. It was originally called Shatzellville, then Boormanville after railroad president James Boorman. Russell's archite ...
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Hudson Valley
The Hudson Valley or Hudson River Valley comprises the valley of the Hudson River and its adjacent communities in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. The region stretches from the Capital District (New York), Capital District including Albany, New York, Albany and Troy, New York, Troy south to Yonkers, New York, Yonkers in Westchester County, New York, Westchester County, bordering New York City. History Pre-Columbian era The Hudson Valley was inhabited by indigenous peoples long before European settlers arrived. The Lenape, Wappinger, and Mahican branches of the Algonquin peoples, Algonquins lived along the river, mostly in peace with the other groups. The lower Hudson River was inhabited by the Lenape. The Lenape people waited for the explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano onshore, traded with Henry Hudson, and sold the island of Manhattan. Further north, the Wappingers lived from Manhattan Island up to Poughkeepsie. They lived a similar lifestyle to the Lenape, residing ...
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