Last year, researching the history of music in Haiti, I came across a description of a big dinner organized on a plantation a decade before the Haitian Revolution.
Laurent Dubois: Last year, researching the history of music in Haiti, I came across a description of a big dinner organized on a plantation a decade before the Haitian Revolution.
Her not matching O'Neill's description of a big bruiser only feeds our sense that Josie has created a persona to hide behind, as Ms. Best clomps about the stage like a wrestler in search of a match.
Three Confederate deserters claimed to have floated from El Paso to Brownsville, in 1861, in a pair of lashed-together dugout canoes but left no description of the Big Bend canyons, which would have represented a noteworthy test.
With his description of a big, scary, arrogant federal government, Mr. Bush sought to distill his policy differences with Mr. Gore, who has called for strengthening Medicare and adding prescription drug coverage within the entitlement program.
He and a friend set about trying to locate the balcony, aided by Capa's description of the "big apartment building that overlooked the bridge" on which German soldiers "were putting up considerable resistance", as well as visual references in the photograph itself.
The language is vague and convoluted, and some details are wrong (Poe had no concept of relativity, and it makes no sense today to speak of the universe exploding into "previously vacant space"), but here, unmistakably, is a crude description of the Big Bang, a theory that didn't find mainstream approval until the 1960's.
But if there is one modern usage I would wipe from existence, it is the word "monster" as a description of something big, like the monster truck rally I went to (which should feature monster-shaped trucks, rather than monster-sized ones. The reality was a grave disappointment and my "Go Godzilla" banner remains folded up in a dark cupboard).
Because while I can't say that I have seen Sir David's entire output, I think it is a reasonable bet that the veteran zoologist has never interrupted his breathy description of a big cat's hunting habits by pointing at an elderly gnu and bellowing: "Away, Leo, get up his arse, my son".
