Riffraff (social Class)
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Riffraff (social Class)
The English expression the hoi polloi (; ; ) was borrowed from Ancient Greek, where it means "the many" or, in the strictest sense, "the people". In English, it has been given a negative connotation to signify the common people. ''We first heard of this ew, oppositesense "the elites")in the early 1950s, when it was reported to be well established in spoken use in such diverse locales as central New Jersey, southern California, Cleveland, Ohio, and Las Vegas, Nevada. Several members of our editorial staff at that time also testified to its common occurrence, and evidence in the years since strongly suggests that this sense of hoi polloi continues to be frequently used in speech. We do not know for certain how this new sense originated, but one possibility is that it developed out of the inherent snobbery of hoi polloi. In its original and primary sense, hoi polloi is a term used by snobs or—more often—in mocking imitation of snobs. Even its sound has a quality of haughtiness ...
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Greek Language
Greek (, ; , ) is an Indo-European languages, Indo-European language, constituting an independent Hellenic languages, Hellenic branch within the Indo-European language family. It is native to Greece, Cyprus, Italy (in Calabria and Salento), southern Albania, and other regions of the Balkans, Caucasus, the Black Sea coast, Asia Minor, and the Eastern Mediterranean. It has the list of languages by first written accounts, longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning at least 3,400 years of written records. Its writing system is the Greek alphabet, which has been used for approximately 2,800 years; previously, Greek was recorded in writing systems such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary. The Greek language holds a very important place in the history of the Western world. Beginning with the epics of Homer, ancient Greek literature includes many works of lasting importance in the European canon. Greek is also the language in which many of the foundational texts ...
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Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek Dark Ages, Dark Ages (), the Archaic Greece, Archaic or Homeric Greek, Homeric period (), and the Classical Greece, Classical period (). Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athens, fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and Ancient Greek philosophy, philosophers. It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been a standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance. This article primarily contains information about the Homeric Greek, Epic and Classical periods of the language, which are the best-attested periods and considered most typical of Ancient Greek. From the Hellenistic period (), Ancient Greek was followed by Koine Greek, which is regar ...
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James Fenimore Cooper
James Fenimore Cooper (September 15, 1789 – September 14, 1851) was an American writer of the first half of the 19th century, whose historical romances depicting colonial and indigenous characters from the 17th to the 19th centuries brought him fame and fortune. He lived much of his boyhood and his last 15 years in Cooperstown, New York, which was founded by his father William Cooper on property that he owned. Cooper became a member of the Episcopal Church shortly before his death, and contributed generously to it. He attended Yale University for three years, where he was a member of the Linonian Society. After a stint on a commercial voyage, Cooper served in the U.S. Navy as a midshipman, where he learned the technology of managing sailing vessels, which greatly influenced many of his novels and other writings. The novel that launched his career was '' The Spy'', a tale about espionage set during the American Revolutionary War and published in 1821. He also created Ameri ...
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English Literature
English literature is literature written in the English language from the English-speaking world. The English language has developed over more than 1,400 years. The earliest forms of English, a set of Anglo-Frisian languages, Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Ango-Saxon settlers in the fifth century, are called Old English. ''Beowulf'' is the most famous work in Old English. Despite being set in Scandinavia, it has achieved national epic status in England. However, following the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, the written form of the Old English, Anglo-Saxon language became less common. Under the influence of the new aristocracy, French became the standard language of courts, parliament, and polite society.Baugh, Albert and Cable, Thomas. 2002. ''The History of the English Language''. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall. pp. 79–81. The English spoken after the Normans came is known as Middle English. This form ...
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Article (grammar)
In grammar, an article is any member of a class of dedicated words that are used with noun phrases to mark the identifiability of the referents of the noun phrases. The category of articles constitutes a part of speech. In English language, English, both "the" and "a(n)" are articles, which combine with nouns to form noun phrases. Articles typically specify the grammatical definiteness of the noun phrase, but in many languages, they carry additional grammatical information such as grammatical gender, gender, grammatical number, number, and grammatical case, case. Articles are part of a broader category called determiners, which also include demonstratives, possessive determiners, and Quantifier (linguistics), quantifiers. In linguistic interlinear glossing, articles are list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated as . Types of article Definite article A definite article is an article that marks a definiteness, definite noun phrase. Definite articles, such as the English ''t ...
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Arabic Language
Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns language codes to 32 varieties of Arabic, including its standard form of Literary Arabic, known as Modern Standard Arabic, which is derived from Classical Arabic. This distinction exists primarily among Western linguists; Arabic speakers themselves generally do not distinguish between Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic, but rather refer to both as ( "the eloquent Arabic") or simply ' (). Arabic is the List of languages by the number of countries in which they are recognized as an official language, third most widespread official language after English and French, one of six official languages of the United Nations, and the Sacred language, liturgical language of Islam. Arabic is widely taught in schools and universities around the wo ...
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Oxford Dictionaries (website)
''Lexico'' was a dictionary website that provided a collection of English and Spanish dictionaries produced by Oxford University Press (OUP), the publishing house of the University of Oxford. While the dictionary content on ''Lexico'' came from OUP, this website was operated by Dictionary.com, whose eponymous website hosts dictionaries by other publishers such as Random House. The website was closed and redirected to Dictionary.com on 26 August 2022. Before the Lexico site was launched, the '' Oxford Dictionary of English'' and '' New Oxford American Dictionary'' were hosted by OUP's own website ''Oxford Dictionaries Online'' (''ODO''), later known as ''Oxford Living Dictionaries''. The dictionaries' definitions have also appeared in Google definition search and the Dictionary application on macOS, among others, licensed through the Oxford Dictionaries API. History In the 2000s, OUP allowed access to content of the '' Compact Oxford English Dictionary of Current English'' on ...
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Definite Article
In grammar, an article is any member of a class of dedicated words that are used with noun phrases to mark the identifiability of the referents of the noun phrases. The category of articles constitutes a part of speech. In English, both "the" and "a(n)" are articles, which combine with nouns to form noun phrases. Articles typically specify the grammatical definiteness of the noun phrase, but in many languages, they carry additional grammatical information such as gender, number, and case. Articles are part of a broader category called determiners, which also include demonstratives, possessive determiners, and quantifiers. In linguistic interlinear glossing, articles are abbreviated as . Types of article Definite article A definite article is an article that marks a definite noun phrase. Definite articles, such as the English '' the,'' are used to refer to a particular member of a group. It may be something that the speaker has already mentioned, or it may be o ...
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Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds and equivalent gestures in sign languages), phonology (the abstract sound system of a particular language, and analogous systems of sign languages), and pragmatics (how the context of use contributes to meaning). Subdisciplines such as biolinguistics (the study of the biological variables and evolution of language) and psycholinguistics (the study of psychological factors in human language) bridge many of these divisions. Linguistics encompasses Outline of linguistics, many branches and subfields that span both theoretical and practical applications. Theoretical linguistics is concerned with understanding the universal grammar, universal and Philosophy of language#Nature of language, fundamental nature of language and developing a general ...
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Athens News
''Athens News'' was an English-language newspaper published in Greece. The paper had regular sections covering aspects of Greek news such as politics, social issues, business, arts & entertainment and sports, as well as international news. Features included analysis of domestic and foreign affairs by leading academics and experts, humour columns and reader contributions. During the dictatorship, ''Athens News'' was a leading voice against the Greek military junta of 1967–1974, junta, and its publisher Yannis Horn was jailed and threatened by the dictators. History ''Athens News'' was founded by Yannis Horn, brother of Dimitris Horn, and first appeared on 29 January 1952. It closed down permanently in March 2013, after a long period of economic problems, making it a victim of the Greek crisis. In 1993, ''Athens News'' was redesigned and revamped when it was acquired by the Lambrakis Foundation, a non-profit research centre specialising in education. As such, it formed part of th ...
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Greek Cypriots
Greek Cypriots (, ) are the ethnic Greeks, Greek population of Cyprus, forming the island's largest Ethnolinguistic group, ethnolinguistic community. According to the 2023 census, 719,252 respondents recorded their ethnicity as Greek, forming almost 99% of the 737,196 Cypriot citizens and over 77.9% of the 923,381 total residents of the area controlled by the Republic of Cyprus. These figures do not include the 29,321 citizens of Greece residing in Cyprus, ethnic Greeks recorded as citizens of other countries, or the population of illegally occupied Northern Cyprus. The majority of Greek Cypriots are members of the Church of Cyprus, an autocephaly, autocephalous Greek Orthodox Church within the wider communion of Eastern Orthodox Church, Orthodox Christianity. In regard to the 1960 Constitution of Cyprus, the term also includes Maronite Cypriots, Maronites, Armenians in Cyprus, Armenians, and Catholic Church in Cyprus, Catholics of the Latin Church ("Latins"), who were given the ...
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Monophthongs
A monophthong ( ) is a pure vowel sound, or one whose articulation at beginning and end is relatively fixed, with the tongue moving neither up nor down and neither forward nor backward towards a new position of articulation. A monophthong can be contrasted with a diphthong, where the vowel quality changes (glides from one quality to another) within the same syllable, and with hiatus, where two vowels are next to each other but in different syllables. A vowel sound whose quality does not change over the duration of the vowel is called a pure vowel. The word comes . ) Sound changes The conversions of monophthongs to diphthongs (diphthongization), and of diphthongs to monophthongs (monophthongization), are major elements of language change and are likely the cause of further changes. In some languages, due to monophthongization, graphemes that originally represented diphthongs now represent monophthongs. See also * Diphthong, also known as a vowel cluster * Vowel hiatus * I ...
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