April 2007

Notable and Quotable: Thornton Wilder

Novelist and dramatist Thornton Wilder was born April 17, 1897. The two-time Pulitzer prizewinner had four siblings, all of whom were similarly accomplished. If you do an author search on Wilder in the Unabridged, you'll come up with 34 hits; of those, only 9 belong to Thornton Wilder. (Other Wilders quoted include Wilder Hobson, Robert Wilder, and Thornton's brother, Amos Wilder).

Wondering if words from a favorite author appear as examples of word usage in the dictionary? It's easy to check. Select the Unabridged as your reference source, click on Advanced Search, type the last name of the author in the Authors Quoted field, and click Search.

attrition noun
"the slow attrition of the soul by the conduct of life"

deify verb
"failed to completely deify"

innumerability noun
"without any sense of the innumerability of the human race"

intrigue verb
"intrigue some bill through the senate"

notation noun
"the whole purport of literature . . . is the notation of the heart"

perhaps noun
"a belief in the great Perhaps"

rumination noun
"these changes call not for argument but for rumination"

strike verb
"no wonder they strike us as silent"

variant noun
"that all societies are but variants of one another"


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