Born in Lichfield, Staffordshire, Johnson attended Pembroke College, Oxford for just over a year, before his lack of funds forced him to leave. After working as a teacher, he moved to London, where he began to write for The Gentleman's Magazine. His early works include the biography Life of Mr Richard Savage, the poems London and The Vanity of Human Wishes, and the play Irene.
After nine years of work, Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1755. It had a far-reaching effect on Modern English and has been described as "one of the greatest single achievements of scholarship". This work brought Johnson popularity and success. Until the completion of the Oxford English Dictionary 150 years later, Johnson's was viewed as the pre-eminent British dictionary. His later works included essays, an influential annotated edition of The Plays of William Shakespeare, and the widely read tale The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia. In 1763, he befriended James Boswell, with whom he later travelled to Scotland; Johnson described their travels in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. Towards the end of his life, he produced the massive and influential Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, a collection of biographies and evaluations of 17th- and 18th-century poets.
Johnson was a tall and robust man. His odd gestures and tics were disconcerting to some on first meeting him. Boswell's Life, along with other biographies, documented Johnson's behaviour and mannerisms in such detail that they have informed the posthumous diagnosis of Tourette syndrome, a condition not defined or diagnosed in the 18th century. After a series of illnesses, he died on the evening of 13 December 1784, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. In the years following his death, Johnson began to be recognised as having had a lasting effect on literary criticism, and he was claimed by some to be the only truly great critic of English literature.
2. deflation : (n.) 1891, "release of air," from deflate + -ion. In reference to currency or economic situations, from 1920. It's antonym is "inflation."
3. Seven deadly sins : also known as the capital vices or cardinal sins, is a grouping and classification of vices of Christian origin. Behaviors or habits are classified under this category if they directly give birth to other immoralities. According to the standard list, they are pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth, which are also contrary to the seven virtues. These sins are often thought to be abuses or excessive versions of one's natural faculties or passions (for example, gluttony abuses one's desire to eat).
This classification originated with the desert fathers, especially Evagrius Ponticus, who identified seven or eight evil thoughts or spirits that one needed to overcome. Evagrius' pupil John Cassian, with his book The Institutes, brought the classification to Europe, where it became fundamental to Catholic confessional practices as evident in penitential manuals, sermons like "The Parson's Tale" from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and artworks like Dante's Purgatory (where the penitents of Mount Purgatory are depicted as being grouped and penanced according to the worst capital sin they committed). The Church used the doctrine of the deadly sins in order to help people stop their inclination towards evil before dire consequences and misdeeds occur; the leader-teachers especially focused on pride (which is thought to be the one that severs the soul from Grace, and one that is representative and the very essence of all evil) and greed, both of which are seen as inherently sinful and as underlying all other sins (although greed, when viewed just by itself and discounting all the sins it might lead to, is generally thought be less serious than sloth). To inspire people to focus on the seven deadly sins, the vices are discussed in treatises, and depicted in paintings and sculpture decorations on churches. Peter Brueghel the Elder's prints of the Seven Deadly Sins and extremely numerous other works, both non-religious and religious, show the continuity of this practice in the culture and everyday life of the modern era.
4. Archangel : an angel of high rank. Beings that are very similar to archangels are found in a number of religious traditions; but the word "archangel" itself is usually associated with the Abrahamic religions.
The word archangel is derived from the Greek ἀρχάγγελος (arch- + angel, literally chief angel).
5. seven virtues : In the Catholic catechism, the seven Christian virtues or heavenly virtues refers to the union of two sets of virtues: from ancient Greek philosophy, are prudence, justice, temperance (meaning restriction or restraint), and courage (or fortitude); and the three theological virtues, from the letters of Saint Paul of Tarsus, are faith, hope, and charity (or love). These were adopted by the Church Fathers as the seven virtues.
6. SAT : a standardized test widely used for college admissions in the United States. Introduced in 1926, its name and scoring have changed several times; originally called the Scholastic Aptitude Test, it was later called the Scholastic Assessment Test, then the SAT I: Reasoning Test, then the SAT Reasoning Test, and now, simply the SAT.
The SAT is owned and published by the College Board, a private, not-for-profit corporation in the United States. It is developed and administered on behalf of the College Board by the Educational Testing Service. The test is intended to assess a student's readiness for college. The SAT was originally designed not to be aligned with high school curricula but several adjustments have been made for the version of the SAT introduced in 2016, and College Board president, David Coleman, has said that he also wanted to make the test reflect more closely what students learned in high school.
On March 5, 2014, the College Board announced that a redesigned version of the SAT would be administered for the first time in 2016. The current SAT, introduced in 2016, takes three hours to finish, plus 50 minutes for the SAT with essay, and as of 2017[update] costs US$45 (US$57 with the optional essay), excluding late fees, with additional processing fees if the SAT is taken outside the United States. Scores on the SAT range from 400 to 1600, combining test results from two 800-point sections: mathematics, and critical reading and writing. Taking the SAT, or its competitor, the ACT, is required for freshman entry to many, but not all, universities in the United States.
7. GRE : a standardized test that is an admissions requirement for most Graduate Schools in the United States. Created and administered by the Educational Testing Service (ETS) in 1949, the exam aims to measure verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, analytical writing, and critical thinking skills that have been acquired over a long period of learning and that are not entirely based on any specific field of study outside of the GRE itself. The GRE General Test is offered as a computer-based exam administered at Prometric testing centers.
In the graduate school admissions process, the level of emphasis that is placed upon GRE scores varies widely between schools and between departments within schools. The importance of a GRE score can range from being a mere admission formality to an important selection factor.
The GRE was significantly overhauled in August 2011, resulting in an exam that is not adaptive on a question-by-question basis, but rather by section, so that the performance on the first verbal and math sections determine the difficulty of the second sections presented. Overall, the test retained the sections and many of the question types from its predecessor, but the scoring scale was changed to a 130 to 170 scale (from a 200 to 800 scale).
The cost to take the test is US$205, although ETS will reduce the fee under certain circumstances. They also promote financial aid to those GRE applicants who prove economic hardship. ETS does not release scores that are older than 5 years, although graduate program policies on the acceptance of scores older than 5 years will vary.
8. ambi-- : word-forming element meaning "both, on both sides," from Latin ambi- "around, round about" (before vowels amb-, also sometimes reduced to am-, an-), from PIE *ambhi "around" (source also of Greek amphi "round about;" Sanskrit abhitah "on both sides," abhi "toward, to;" Avestan aibi; Old English ymbe, German um; Gaulish ambi-, Old Irish imb- "round about, about;" Old Church Slavonic oba; Lithuanian abu "both"). The PIE root probably is an ablative plural of *ant-bhi "from both sides," from *ant- "front, forehead" (see ante).
9. amphi-- : before a vowel amph-, word-forming element meaning "on both sides, of both kinds; on all sides, all around," from Greek amphi (prep., adv.) "round about, on both sides of, all around; about, regarding," which is cognate with Latin ambi-, both from PIE root *ambi "around" (see ambi-).
10. philanthropy : (from Greek φιλανθρωπία) means etymologically, the love of humanity, in the sense of caring, nourishing, developing, and enhancing what it means to be human. In this meaning, it involves both the benefactor in their identifying and exercising their values, and the beneficiary in their receipt and benefit from the service or goods provided. A conventional modern definition is "private initiatives, for the public good, focusing on quality of life," which combines an original humanistic tradition with a social scientific aspect developed in the 20th century. The definition also serves to contrast philanthropy with business endeavors, which are private initiatives for private good, e.g., focusing on material gain, and with government endeavors, which are public initiatives for public good, e.g., focusing on provision of public services. A person who practices philanthropy is called a philanthropist.
Philanthropy has distinguishing features from charity; not all charity is philanthropy, or vice versa, though there is a recognized degree of overlap in practice. A difference commonly cited is that charity aims to relieve the pain of a particular social problem, whereas philanthropy attempts to address the root cause of the problem—the difference between the proverbial gift of a fish to a hungry person, versus teaching them how to fish.
11. Noah : In the Abrahamic religions, Noah (/ˈnoʊ.ə/; Hebrew: נֹחַ, נוֹחַ, Modern Noaẖ, Tiberian Nōăḥ; Syriac: ܢܘܚ Nukh; Arabic: نُوح Nūḥ; Ancient Greek: Νῶε) was the tenth and last of the pre-flood Patriarchs. The story of Noah's Ark is told in the Bible's Genesis flood narrative. The biblical account is followed by the story of the Curse of Canaan.
Besides the Book of Genesis, Noah is also mentioned in the First book of Chronicles, and the books of Tobit, Wisdom, Sirach, Isaiah, Ezekiel, 2 Esdras, 4 Maccabees; and in the New Testament in the Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel of Luke, the Epistle to the Hebrews, 1st Peter and 2nd Peter. Noah was the subject of much elaboration in the literature of later Abrahamic religions, including the Quran (Sura 71).
12. Prometheus : demigod (son of the Titan Iapetus) who made man from clay and stole fire from heaven and taught mankind its use, for which he was punished by Zeus by being chained to a rock in the Caucasus, where a vulture came every day and preyed on his liver. The name is Greek, and anciently was interpreted as literally "forethinker, foreseer," from promethes "thinking before," from pro "before" (see pro-) + *methos, related to mathein "to learn," from enlargement of PIE root *men- (1) "to think" (see mind (n.)). However Watkins suggests the second element is possibly from a base meaning "to steal," also found in Sanskrit mathnati "he steals."
13. Atlas : In Greek mythology, Atlas (/ˈætləs/; Ancient Greek: Ἄτλας) was a Titan condemned to hold up the sky for eternity after the Titanomachy. Although associated with various places, he became commonly identified with the Atlas Mountains in northwest Africa (modern-day Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia). Atlas was the son of the Titan Iapetus and the Oceanid Asia or Clymene. He had many children, mostly daughters, the Hesperides, the Hyades, the Pleiades, and the nymph Calypso who lived on the island Ogygia. According to the ancient Greek poet Hesiod Atlas stood at the ends of the earth towards the west.
According to Robert Graves's The Greek Myths, the Pelasgians believed the creator goddess Eurynome assigned Atlas and Phoebe to govern the moon.
Hyginus emphasises the primordial nature of Atlas by making him the son of Aether and Gaia.
"Atlantic Ocean" means "Sea of Atlas", while "Atlantis" means "island of Atlas".
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