{"id":2816,"date":"2018-04-13T23:24:38","date_gmt":"2018-04-13T23:24:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/?p=2816"},"modified":"2018-04-14T03:25:06","modified_gmt":"2018-04-14T03:25:06","slug":"word-of-the-day-pithy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/2018\/04\/13\/word-of-the-day-pithy\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Day: Pithy"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1>Paul Schleifer<\/h1>\n<p>According to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dictionary.com\">www.dictionary.com<\/a>, <em>pithy<\/em> means \u201cbrief, forceful, and meaningful in expression.\u201d According to the <em>OED<\/em>, it means \u201cfull of concentrated meaning; conveying meaning forcibly through brevity of expression,\u201d though it can also be used about a person, one who \u201cspeaks or writes pithily.\u201d Of course, it can also mean \u201ccontaining much pith; covered in or consisting of pith,\u201d but only when it is referring to fruit.<\/p>\n<p>So where does it come from. One might guess that <em>pithy<\/em> comes from <em>pith<\/em>, and one might be right. <em>Pith<\/em> comes from \u201cOld English\u00a0<em>pi\u00fea<\/em>\u00a0\u2018pith of plants\u2019 also \u2018essential part,\u2019 from West Germanic\u00a0*<em>pithan-<\/em>\u00a0(source also of Middle Dutch\u00a0<em>pitte<\/em>, Dutch\u00a0<em>pit<\/em>, East Frisian\u00a0<em>pit<\/em>), a Low German root of uncertain origin. Figurative sense was in Old English,\u201d according to www.etymonline.com. In other words, the pith of a fruit is the important stuff inside the fruit, and the pith of someone\u2019s remarks is the important stuff at the center of the remarks. And someone who is pithy is able to communicate their message in a concise fashion that delivers the important stuff without a whole lot of fluff.<\/p>\n<p>Today in Venice, CA, the Pacific Resident Theatre staged the first full production of <em>The Dorothy Parker Project<\/em>. It is based on a concept by Robert Cannon with material by the playwright Katherine Bates, and it\u2019s co-directed by Michael Cooper and Marilyn Fox. It stars Diane Hurley as Parker, and it features a cast performing five of her short stories and a few of her poems, according to <em>Pressreader<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Who was Dorothy Parker? you ask. She was a writer and critic in the early part of the 20<sup>th<\/sup> century well known for her sharp wit.<\/p>\n<p>Here are a few quotes, courtesy of Mental Floss.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBeauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo me, the most beautiful word in the English language is cellar-door. Isn\u2019t it wonderful? The ones I like, though, are &#8216;cheque&#8217; and &#8216;enclosed.'&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere&#8217;s a hell of a distance between wise-cracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wise-cracking is simply calisthenics with words.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMoney cannot buy health, but I&#8217;d settle for a diamond-studded wheelchair.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And I\u2019ll conclude with a poem by Parker:<\/p>\n<p>ON DEATH:<\/p>\n<p>Razors pain you,<\/p>\n<p>Rivers are damp,<\/p>\n<p>Acids stain you,<\/p>\n<p>And drugs cause cramp.<\/p>\n<p>Guns aren&#8217;t lawful,<\/p>\n<p>Nooses give,<\/p>\n<p>Gas smells awful.<\/p>\n<p>You might as well live.<\/p>\n<p>Parker was pithy.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The image is a photograph, by an unknown photographer, or Dorothy Parker in the 1910s or 20s, when she would have been in her 20s or early 30s. She was born in 1893 and died in 1967.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Paul Schleifer According to www.dictionary.com, pithy means \u201cbrief, forceful, and meaningful in expression.\u201d According to the OED, it means \u201cfull of concentrated meaning; conveying meaning forcibly through brevity of expression,\u201d [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2817,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-word-of-the-day","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2816"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2816\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2818,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2816\/revisions\/2818"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}