Shavian - definition of Shavian by The Free Dictionary Shavian - definition of Shavian by The Free Dictionary Also found in: Thesaurus , Encyclopedia , Wikipedia . Sha·vi·an Of, relating to, or characteristic of George Bernard Shaw or his works: Shavian wit. n. An admirer or disciple of George Bernard Shaw. [From Shavius, Latinization of the name Shaw.] Shavian (ˈʃeɪvɪən) adj (Literary & Literary Critical Terms) of, relating to, or like George Bernard Shaw, his works, ideas, etc n (Literary & Literary Critical Terms) an admirer of Shaw or his works ˈShavianism n 1. of, pertaining to, or characteristic of George Bernard Shaw or his works. n. 2. a specialist in Shavian literature. [1905–10; Shav- (Latinization of Shaw ) + -ian ] Sha′vi•an•ism, n. ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend: 1. Shavian - an admirer of G. B.

Shaw or his works admirer , booster , protagonist , supporter , champion , friend - a person who backs a politician or a team etc.; "all their supporters came out for the game"; "they are friends of the library" Adj. Shavian - of or relating to George Bernard Shaw or his works Translations [ˈʃeɪvɪən] ADJ → shaviano, típico de G. B. Shaw Shavian adj → shawsch Want to thank TFD for its existence? Tell a friend about us , add a link to this page, or visit the webmaster's page for free fun content . Link to this page: Tony Jason Stafford. Shaw's Settings: Gardens and Libraries McInerney (who compares Shavian heroines to a number of contemporary powerful women, including Hillary Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, and the late Margaret Thatcher); however, four of the eleven essays in Shaw and Feminisms discuss Mrs Warren's Profession at length, and there is also a repeated focus on The Philanderer, Misalliance, Saint Joan, and The Millionairess in the volume. D.A.

Hadfield and Jean Reynolds (editors), Shaw and Feminisms: On Stage and Off The show thus set out the full, bewildering plethora of Shavian themes, which range from the perennial big topics (sex, religion, myth, the unconscious, cultism, consumerism, advertising, US politics, history, and culture) to a tsunami of minutiae: obscure rock groups, comics, holy imagery seen in pizza toppings, and the complex rigmarole of "Oism," Shaw's homegrown, Mormon-style feminist cult. Jim Shaw: Baltic centre for contemporary art/Baltic 39 Cukor had already explored the Shavian Pygmalion in Born Yesterday (1950) and A Star is Born (1954), a plot that was explored indirectly in hundreds of films, from The Red Shoes (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1948) to Pretty Woman (Garry Marshall, 1990). Pygmalian Play as a Shavian Play. Essay - 633 Words Shavian Play Essay ...What is a Shavian Play?

Shavian – of pertaining to, or characteristic of George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) or his works Shaw belongs to the late Victorian age but his era is named as Shavian era or age because he is one of those writers of English history who were able to drag the audience out of their homes on the basis of their strong management of characters and sense of morality. According to Shaw, his dramas come under the category... 518 Words | 2 Pages Shavian Play Essay ...PORPHYRIA’S LOVER The Story: a young man waits in his cottage for his beloved, who has stolen away from her rich family to see him. When she arrives, he murders her so he can possess her forever. The Voice: the story is told by the young lover himself, as a first-person, intra-diegetic narrator. In this poem, Browning creates the voice of a madman and much of the poem’s dramatic intensity arises from the contrast between how he portrays the events of the story and how we, as rational, moral...

1103 Words | 3 Pages Play Essay ...Play is what children wants to do and what they choose to do when given the freedom, independence, time and space to determine their own behaviour. All children have a natural desire to play and will therefore play anywhere they are given the opportunity. Children’s play can be happy or sad, loud or quiet, calm or chaotic, creative or destructive, sociable or isolated and imaginative or real. Sometimes play can be risky,... 1640 Words | 5 Pages In The Play Essay ...﻿ In the play “Romeo and Juliet” by William Shakespeare, we are introduced to a controversial yet crucial character named Mercutio. However, in the original Shakespeare play and the modern film adaption of Romeo and Juliet by Luhrmann, the presentation of this character alters. Mercutio’s name derives from the word ‘mercurial’ which means eloquent, active sprightly and changeable, and Shakespeare purposely used this characters name as to present his character of... 1373 Words | 2 Pages Play Essay ...fEATURE THE BENEFITS OF PLAY Play has positive implications for cognitive developmen Play stimulates children's imagination, aids problem-solving and contribules 10 children's creativity.

The important role of exploratory play has been confirmed Both scholars and praditioners argue that by neuroscience. According to Mustard (20051, ploy-based learning, if 'properly 'play is pedagogy'; but, otthe same time,... 435 Words | 4 Pages Essay on Pygmalion as a Shavian play ...﻿6. Comment on Pygmalion as a Shavian play. Pygmalion is a classic Shavian play in as far as it shows his feelings about the falsity of the class system and his belief that all humans are essentially equal and privilege should play no part in life. Higgins is also a very Shavian character with his inspired logic and bombastic deliver. Like all great Shavian drama Pygmalion is a richly complex... 381 Words | 1 Pages Essay on english play ...Lulu: Nanny, this is our little sister! Nanny: She’s lovely! What’s her name? Larry: Betsy! Lulu: Chuckles, what’s this? Larry: Is it a little chimp? Nanny: No, it isn’t. It’s a teddy! Lulu: Look at our toys, Nanny!

We have a lot of things to play with! Larry: They’re little Betsy’s toys, now! She needs them more than we do. Nanny: What’s this? Is it a game? Lulu: It’s a tea set. Look! This is my train and that’s my elephant. Nanny: Whose is this musical box? Larry:... 311 Words | 2 Pages The Plays Essay ...By and large, the people who settled in the New England Colonies wanted to keep their family unit together and practice their own religion. They were used to doing many things themselves and not depending on other people for much. Some of these people came to New England to make money, but they were not the majority. The people who founded the Middle Colonies were looking to practice their own religion (Pennsylvania mainly) or to make money. Many of these people didn't bring their families... 333 Words | 2 Pages Shavian - definition - What is ? What is ? Shavian definition : Shavian The Shavian alphabet (also known as the Shaw alphabet) is an alphabet conceived as a way to provide simple, phonetic orthography for the English language to replace the difficulties of conventional spelling.

It was posthumously funded by and named after Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw. Shaw set three main criteria for the new alphabet: it should be (1) at least 40 letters; (2) as "phonetic" as possible (that is, letters should have a 1:1 correspondence to phonemes); and (3) distinct from the Latin alphabet to avoid the impression that the new spellings were simply "misspellings". == Letters == The Shavian alphabet consists of three types of letters: tall, deep and short. Short letters are vowels, liquids (r, l) and nasals; tall letters (except Yea and Hung ) are voiceless consonants. A tall letter rotated 180° or flipped, with the tall part now extending below the baseline, becomes a deep letter, representing equivalent voiced consonant (except Haha ). The alphabet is therefore to some extent featural. There are no separate capital or lowercase letters as in the Latin script; instead of using capitalization to mark proper names, a "naming dot" (·) is placed before a name. All other punctuation and word spacing is similar to conventional orthography.

== Other print literature == For a time in the early 1960s a journal was printed using Shaw's Alphabet with much of the content submitted by Shaw enthusiasts. There are few remaining copies of this journal. In more recent years there have been several published works of classical literature transliterated into Shavian. The first, released in 2012, was the works of Edgar Allan Poe entitled 'Poe Meets Shaw: The Shaw Alphabet Edition of Edgar Allan Poe' by Tim Browne. This book was published via Shaw Alphabet Books and had two editions in its original release. One, like Androcles and the Lion, had Shavian side-by-side with the Latin equivalent and the other was a Shavian only edition. The second such work, released in 2013, was 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: An edition printed in the Shaw Alphabet' by Thomas Thurman via Evertype books. This work was released as a Shaw only edition with no side-by-side Latin equivalent. The Shavian fonts were designed by Michael Everson. == Disagreement == Some disagreement has arisen among the Shavian community in regard to sound–symbol assignments, which have been the topic of frequent arguments.

Primarily, this has concerned the alleged reversal of two pairs of letters. === Haha-Hung reversal === The most frequent disagreement of the letter reversals has been over the Haha–Hung pair. The most convincing evidence suggesting this reversal is in the names of the letters: The unvoiced letter Haha is deep, while the voiced Hung, which suggests a lower position, is tall. This is often assumed to be a clerical error introduced in the rushed printing of the Shavian edition of Androcles and the Lion. This reversal obscures the system of tall letters as voiceless consonants and deep letters as voiced consonants. Proponents of traditional Shavian, however, have suggested that Kingsley Read may not have intended for this system to be all-encompassing, though it seems that vertical placement alone served this purpose in an earlier version of Shavian, before the rotations were introduced. Also, Read may have intentionally reversed these letters, perhaps to emphasize that these letters represent unrelated sounds, which happen to occur in complementary distribution.

It is also possible that he was motivated at least in part by the high frequency of the English suffix "-ing": In handwriting, the tall "Hung" allows "ing" to be written without lifting the pen ( 𐑦𐑙 ), which is impractical or impossible with the hypothetical deep "Hung" ( 𐑦𐑣 ) when writing with a fountain pen, the implement of choice at the time of Shaw's death; practical ballpoint pens did not become available until the early or mid 1950s. Both sides of the debate have suggested other reasons, including associations with various styles of Latin letters (namely, the /g/ in /-ing/, often written with a bottom-loop in script) and the effect of letter-height on the coastlines of words, but whether Read considered any of these is uncertain. Since the letter representing the same sound in Read's Quikscript appears identical to "Hung", it is doubtful that Read reversed the letter twice by mistake—he may have thought it best to leave things as they were, mistake or not, especially as a corrected /ng/ might in hasty or careless writing be confused with his new letter for /n/ in Quikscript.

=== Other reversals === Two other letters that are often alleged to have been reversed—intentionally or not—are Air and Err. Both are ligatures, and their relation to other letters is usually taken as evidence for this reversal. One of the beliefs that leads to such allegations is that Air "𐑺" is a ligature of the letters Egg "𐑧" and Roar "𐑮". Based on their appearance, one would expect the ligature of these letters to be joined at the bottom and free at the top, yet the opposite is true. Another such belief is that Err "𐑻" is a ligature of the letters Up "𐑳" and Roar "𐑮". Based on their appearance, one would expect the ligature of these letters to be joined at the top and free at the bottom, yet once again, the opposite is true. == Variants == === Quikscript === Some years after the initial publication of the Shaw alphabet, Read expanded it to create Quikscript, also known as the Read Alphabet. Quikscript is intended to be more useful for handwriting, and to that end is more cursive and uses more ligatures.

Many letter forms are roughly the same in both alphabets; see the separate article for more details. === Revised Shaw alphabet === Paul Vandenbrink has created a new alphabet inspired by the Shavian alphabet which takes the controversial step of replacing most of the specific vowel letters with markers indicating which of several sets of vowel types a vowel belongs to, thus reducing the number of vowel distinctions and lessening the written differences between dialectal variations of English. === Ŝava alfabeto === An adaptation of Shavian to another language, Esperanto, was developed by John Wesley Starling; though not widely used, at least one [ booklet] has been published with transliterated sample texts. As that language is already spelled phonemically, direct conversion from Latin to Shavian letters can be performed, though several ligatures are added for the common combinations of vowels with n and s and some common short words. Pronunciations that differ from their English values are marked in bold red. {| style="text-align: center" !

Ŝava letter | 𐑨 | 𐑚 | 𐑔 | 𐑗 | 𐑛 | 𐑧 | 𐑓 | 𐑜 | 𐑡 | 𐑣 | 𐑙 | 𐑦 | 𐑢 | 𐑠 |- ! Pronunciation | '' | | '' | | | '' | | | | | '' | '' | | |- !

rowspan="10" valign="top" | Conventional orthography | a | b | c | ĉ | d | e | f | g | ĝ | h | ĥ | i | j | ĵ |- | |- lang="eo-Shaw" | 𐑒 | 𐑤 | 𐑫 | 𐑵 | 𐑩 | 𐑐 | 𐑮 | 𐑕 | 𐑖 | 𐑑 | 𐑪 | 𐑘 | 𐑝 | 𐑟 |- | | | '' | '' | '' | | | | | | '' | | | |- | k | l | m | n | o | p | r | s | ŝ | t | u | ŭ | v | z |- !

colspan="14" | ----Ligatures |- | Image:shavian-la.png | Image:shavian-kaj.png | Image:shavian-au.png | Image:shavian-aj.png |- | la || kaj || aŭ || aj |} == Unicode == Shavian was added to the Unicode Standard in April 2003 with the release of version 4.0. === Block === The Unicode block for Shavian is U+10450–U+1047F and is in Plane 1 (the Supplementary Multilingual Plane). === Fonts === Support for this part of Unicode is fairly new, and not all computer systems support it. Unicode Shavian fonts are also still quite rare. Before it was standardised, fonts were made that include Shavian letters in the places of Roman letters, and/or in an agreed upon location in the Unicode private use area, allocated from the ConScript Unicode Registry and now superseded by the official Unicode standard. These following fonts contain full Unicode support for Shavian. Be sure to install one of these fonts to your Windows/Mac/Linux to display the Slavian glyphs.

* [ Andagii] * Apple Symbols, part of Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard * Code2001 (part of Code2000 font family, contains rough-drawn Shavian characters as of version 0.919 (April 2008). * Everson Mono * [ ESL Gothic Unicode] * MPH 2B Damase * [#/ Noto Sans Shavian] * Segoe UI Historic (part of Windows 10) * [ Trabajo] == See also == * Quikscript * Readspel * Shorthand * Pitman shorthand * Gregg shorthand * Deseret alphabet == References == == External links == * [ Yahoo!

Group on Shavian] * [ Omniglot.com article on Shavian] * [ Revised Shaw Alphabet, history, etc.] * [ Shaw Alphabet enthusiast website & repository] * [ Browser test page for Unicode Shavian] * [ ConScript Unicode Registry], describes unofficial assignment of Shavian letters in Unicode private use area (Since withdrawn in favour of the official encoding) * [~marnanel/Lingua-EN-Alphabet-Shaw-0.03/lib/Lingua/EN/Alphabet/Shaw.pm Lingua-EN-Alphabet-Shaw], a Perl module to transliterate * [ Poe Meets Shaw: The Shaw Alphabet Edition of Edgar Allan Poe] * [ Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: An Edition Printed in the Shaw Alphabet] Category:English spelling reform Category:Auxiliary and educational artificial scripts Category:1960 introductions Category:Scripts encoded in Unicode 4.0 The ZehnKatzen Times: [type] Shavian, An Alternative English Alphabet By Samuel John Klein of Portland, Oregon - An Independent Graphic Designer living in a city that was built upon an ancient Unicorn burial ground.

11 February 2010 [type] Shavian, An Alternative English Alphabet 2320.I've been doing a great deal of reading about shorthand scripts, and have found out a great deal about them. The biggest revelation is that shorthand, to work, has to – to some degree – abandon the alphabetic sytem of writing in favor of phonetic symbols. What that means, of course, is that each glyph, character, or symbol might represent a sound instead of a letter with which you construct them. Gregg shorthand is, in my opinion, a very good illustrative example of this. When you write via Gregg, you put what you hear through two filters; the first discriminates the sounds, the second maps them to squiggly glyphs representing phonetic atoms rather than decodes them into the letter combinations which create the sounds. Speed is gained by efficiency in writing; the sound-based glyphs and brief forms dash down an entire word in a squiggle, loop, and dot. Phonetic sounds are not just the province of the shorthand writer, however. Something that seems to fit between the glyphic discreteness of Latinate script and the squiggles of pure shorthand is something called the Shavian alphabet.

This system, developed in the late 1950s-early 1960s, depends on new glyph forms having little if anything to do with the 26-character Latin alphabet we all know intimately. Moreover, each letterform maps to an individual English sound. The legend seems to have it that, in his will, the great Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw left a monetary prize to be granted to the person who developed a phonetic alphabetic system for the writing of English that, since it was to depend on sounds rather than letters, would be a more efficient and economic way to write English and, since it was based on sounds, easier for the English learner to pick up the language. Originally it was to be developed by Sir Isaac Pitman, developer of the Pitman Shorthand system, but due to disuptes the Trustee opened it up to a worldwide competition. This was won by a Ronald Kingsley Read, who developed the first Shavian alphabet and was appointed its sole designer. The Shavian alphabet is characterized by an inherent sense of order and logic.

This ( source ) is the system that Kingsley Read developed and is known as the original Shavian script: The Shavian alphabet comes in three basic types and a fourth auxiliary type. The first two types cover the consonants, and are called Tall (for unvoiced consonants) and Deep (for voiced consonants). The third time are Short letters, and cover the vowel sounds. The Compound (called "ah", "awe", "are", "or", "air", "err", "array", "ear", "ian", and "yew") are blends of two short sounds (except that last one there), and provide for what they call "rhotic" speakers, that is, those dialects that voice the "r" in the word "hard", for a fast example. The eye will probably pick up right away that the Deep letters are 180-degree rotation of the Tall letters, and the short letters have mostly graphically reflective pairs. These sounds (with a few exceptions) are the voice-unvoiced versions of the same sound. Note also the pairs of tick marks between the letter pairs: they are all the height of a Short letter, or, as a typographer might say, "x-height".

The graphical definition of a Tall letter is one which starts on the baseline and goes to ascender height; the graphical definition of a Deep letter is one which goes to the descender. The real fun of Shavian (anything having to do with the playwright Shaw was called Shavian) is that, even though it's sounding out English, it looks so delightfully extraterrastrial. From Omniglot, here's the text of Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: The translation of which is: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. Another thing about Shavian which is a great deal of fun is the letter names. You might have noticed that, in the letter list, a word typifing the sound made by each letter is displayed. That is the actual name of the letter. Reciting Shavian would go Peep, bib, tot, dead, kick, gig, fee, vow … all the way through to ian, yew. That makes me feel kind of antic inside, in the good way.

The apparent hope of Shaw was that a library of publications would obtain after his death but challenges to the will assured that only one mass-market Shaw script publication would ever happen: A Shavian-Latin edition of Shaw's Androcles and the Lion. But there is some interest in Shavian and it's infected me a little; I'd like to learn this along with any other shorthand system I take up – which will most likely be an attempt at Gregg. Read: The Wikipedia entry on Shavian at Read: The Omniglot entry on Shavian at Visit: The Shavian Alphabet website at A.Word.A.Day -- AWADmail Issue 164 AWADmail Issue 164 May 21, 2005 A Weekly Compendium of Feedback on the Words in A.Word.A.Day and Other Interesting Tidbits about Words and Languages From: Jim Dette (jtdetteATaol.com) Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day-- abigail In the early 1950s I worked in French Morocco and lived in a construction camp. Some of the married men whose wives accompanied them lived in the nearby town.

They all had housemaids that they referred to as fatimas and pronounced as fah-TEEM-ah. Fatima was the daughter of Mohammed and is very common name, similar to Maria in Latin America. From: Kamil Gryko Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day-- Gresham's law Gresham was not the first to formulate the law. It is also sometimes called the Copernicus-Gresham's Law, after Nicolaus Copernicus, the Polish astronomer, who wrote 'Monetae cudendae ratio' in 1526. The relation between the good and the bad money was also described by Nicolas Oresmes (14th cent.) and even Aristophanes. From: John Ellis (johnpellisATatt.net) Subject: Gresham's law We've seen Gresham's law at work in the US in the last 40 years when the US Mint switched from silver-based coins to laminated copper and copper-nickel coins.

I was in the Coin Telephone development group at AT&T Bell Laboratories when this change was made and saw first hand the close cooperation between the coin vending machine industry and the Mint to be sure that the change in material would not let coins be confused as slugs when used in machines. It didn't take many years before almost all the silver-based coins were removed from circulation. Some are probably in your bottom drawer right now. From: Diana Bouchard (dianabATaei.ca) Subject: Gresham's Law of Politics Oh, my. A Gresham's Law of politics. I live in Canada. Need I say more? From: Teofila Guillermo (tguillermoATamhsamarina.com) Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--Gresham's law This is sadly very true in Latin American democracies where, by being a politician, one is automatically branded as dishonest. More yet, if you are not, then you are branded as a fool. As a result, many worthy people would not consider being involved in politics or government work to avoid that kind of image. No wonder we have so many scandals.

From: Mara Math (mjmathATsaber.net) Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--Gresham's law Hmmm. . . The major publishing houses continue to spend huge amounts purchasing and marketing the novels of John Grisham and other blockbuster authors while dropping the majority of mid-list mystery writers despite their solid and respectable sales. This suggests a corollary law: Grisham's Law of Literature, in which bad or mediocre writing drives out good. From: Gary Mason (garybmasonATcox.net) Subject: Gresham's law A derivative law is Gresham's law of television which states that "Pure drivel drives ordinary drivel off the screen." From: Andrew Platt (plattATbyu.edu) Subject: Gresham's law I first encountered Gresham's law not in economics but in researching education systems. One theory is that standardized testing acts in the same way as counterfeit money in that it displaces so-called authentic learning like writing or analytical thinking. When diplomas based on a minimum-proficiency standards become the currency of employment or college-entry it displaces the value of the other indices of education.

Since encountering the principle, I have noticed it has corollaries, such as Gresham's law of buffets and potlucks. When someone (okay, me) who would normally content himself with a salad finds himself in front of a buffet filled with rich meats and casseroles, the bad food displaces the healthful on my plate. I think the same law operates in consumption of entertainment, where the salacious crowds out the uplifting. From: Carolanne Reynolds (crATcarolanne.org) > But our society admires thinness -- the Rubenesque Marilyn Monroe likely > would be considered too plump these days -- and so some of our children, > in the quest to look attractive, may starve themselves." > S. Jennifer Hunter; Where Were Schiavo's Loved Ones As Disorder Led to > Downfall?; Chicago Sun-Times; Apr 6, 2005. Marilyn Monroe was more Renoir than Rubenesque. Rubens's nudes were more than Renoir's pleasantly plump -- they were fat, roly-poly chubby.

Marilyn Monroe, while with a little more flesh than the 'ideal' today, wasn't even quite as plump as a Renoir. From: Peter G. Neaman (pneamanATpanix.com) Subject: Re: Rubenesque Just to let you know, "Rubenesque" is an ignorantism of the first water. The artist's name was Peter Paul Rubens. The adjective would be Rubensesque. Well, your professor is going to have to kill a lot of people. It's logical that the word should be spelled "Rubensesque" but when it comes to human languages (as opposed to computer languages), usage trumps logic every time. "Rubensesque" is relatively harder to pronounce, and English speakers went with Rubenesque. "Rubensesque" does appear, about once for every 100 occurrences of Rubenesque. Most dictionaries don't even list the variant "Rubensesque". Another such example is the term Shavian (pertaining to G.B. Shaw).

-Anu Garg (garg AT wordsmith.org) From: Emily Rohrer (eclaireATmetbymail.com) Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day-- Apgar score On February 28, 1997, I lay on the operating room table, my second son having been born via c-section after a day and a night of fruitless labor. The nurses were busy cleaning up my new baby, and I heard one of them shout "A perfect nine!" Despite being only semi-conscious, I felt a swell of pride and relief, having been told in childbirth class that no baby is a 10, so an Apgar score of 9 indeed meant perfection! It was only later that my husband informed me that the coveted nine was in fact my son's *weight*. No wonder he wouldn't come out! And to this day, I have no idea what his Apgar scores really were.

From: Marisa Carder (marisa_carderATmckinsey.com) Subject: Apgar score When our daughter Margaret (now 13) was born, despite a complicated pregnancy and induced delivery ahead of her due date, she received an Apgar score of 10 both times (1 and 5 minutes after birth). Only later did we parents realize how rare that is. Doting first-timers that we were, still we were amazed that every single nurse that came to see us told us what a beautiful baby she was.

Finally my husband Harry said, "Oh come on, you say that to all the parents, don't you?" The nurse laughed and replied, "Oh no, not all babies are that beautiful!" Curious, Harry asked, "What do you say to those parents?" and the nurse replied, "We say, 'What a healthy baby!'" (I've also subsequently heard, "Your baby looks just like you!") From: Yosef Bar-On (jobaronATgalon.org.il) Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day-- Lady Bountiful Today's eponym takes me back, more than half a century, to high school where my English teacher, a tall and statuesque blond of a certain age, Miss Farquhar often told us stories of her most illustrious ancestor, the Irish playwright, George Farquhar. Though the encyclopedia says that he was on his deathbed when he completed his masterpiece, The Beaux' Stratagem, Miss Farquhar claimed that he died in a drunken brawl in a tavern! From: David A. Tozier (wryrytrATjuno.com) Subject: A.Word.A.Day--Lady Bountiful Thank you for the different (for me) definition of the term.

Before your having enlightened me, I had been under the mis-impression that referred to a "full-figured gal". From: Jeb B. Raitt (raittjbATssg.navy.mil) Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--Lady Bountiful There is or was a plus-size clothing store or chain of stores by that name. So difficult it is to show the various meanings and imperfections of words when we have nothing else but words to do it with. -John Locke, philosopher (1632-1704) Other Issues: 3-Day Festival to Celebrate G.B.S. - NYTimes.com 3-Day Festival to Celebrate G.B.S. By ALVIN KLEIN Published: April 15, 1990 HE was interested in everything, he knew it all, or was convinced he did, and he kept changing his mind. Variously called the most famous, paradoxical, prolific, verbose and prophetic writer in the world, George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) is the subject of a weekend-long festival to be held Friday through next Sunday at the Best Western Grand Royal Hotel in Hempstead.

More than a dozen Shavian scholars and enthusiasts are scheduled to participate in a series of symposiums that will examine Shaw as a reflection of his time and as an influence upon the future, with particular attention to his role as a visionary advocate of feminism. An Admission-Free Event Under the title ''The Once and Future Shaw,'' the event, to which the public is invited free, is being presented by Long Island Stage in connection with the theater's production of Shaw's little-known 1908 play, ''Getting Married.'' It began performances last Tuesday at the Hays Theater on the campus of Molloy College in Rockville Centre, where it will continue through April 29. Included among the weekend's attractions are a slide show depicting Shaw's favorite haunts in the late 1800's. Called ''Shaw's London,'' it will be introduced by Dr. Stanley Weintraub, a professor at Pennsylvania State University and a renowned Shavian scholar. There also will be performances of two short, obscure Shavian works -''Augustus Does His Bit,'' an attack upon military bureaucracy, and ''Shakes vs. Shav,'' his last theater work, which he wrote at age 94.

It is a puppet play wherein Shaw, who proclaimed himself as superior to Shakespeare, finally lets the Bard win. Clinton J. Atkinson, the Long Island Stage artistic director, emphasized that the weekend was designed to celebrate Shaw by ''putting him in context, and getting scholars to interact with the community without the framework of an academic institutional setting.'' ''But it isn't all fun and games,'' he said. ''It is a literary event.'' An Established Tradition In his 10 years as the theater's artistic head, Mr. Atkinson has established a tradition of mounting a Shavian work every season. The notion for a Shavian festival on the Island came about two years ago, Mr. Atkinson recalled. It was conceived by Jeffrey Ranbom, then the theater's director of marketing and publicity. In endorsing the project, Mr. Atkinson called Shaw ''the most contemporary of playwrights, even for the 90's,'' and said that the festival would ''give our theater a unique personal stamp.'' An $80,000 grant was received from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Additional financing was provided by the Nassau County Office of Cultural Development ($11,000) and the Billy Rose Foundation ($5,000). The festivities, which include refreshments, coincide with the 40th anniversary of Shaw's death and the 100th anniversary of his breakthrough critical commentary, ''The Quintessence of Ibsenism.'' According to Mr. Atkinson, Dr. Weintraub believes that ''Getting Married'' is the ''most pertinent of the Shavian plays that are not well known, but should be.'' ''It's about the ins and outs of a marital relationship, which also means how to get out of one, how to have an open marriage, how a housewife can be compensated and how a woman who is not interested in a man can raise a child on her own,'' Mr. Atkinson said. ''And there's a discussion about pre-nuptial contracts. It could come right out of today's headlines - and it's funny.'' Dr. Rhoda Nathan, a professor of English at Hofstra University, describes ''Getting Married'' as ''the most modern, enlightened, breathtaking and adventurous view of marriage ever written by a playwright.'' Dr.

Nathan is vice president of the Bernard Shaw Society - she calls it ''the oldest continuing literary society in New York'' - and wrote, among other pieces on Shaw, ''Sphinxes, Sirens and Saints,'' a study of the playwright's portrayal of women. She will introduce one of the festival's panels, ''Shaw and the Cultural Moment: 1901-1914.'' George Bernard Shaw wrote 52 plays, one of which, ''Back to Methusaleh'' (1920), has a 30,000-word preface. ''Arms and the Man,'' ''Candida,'' ''The Devil's Disciple,'' ''Caesar and Cleopatra,'' ''Man and Superman,'' ''Pygmalion'' and ''St. Joan'' are among his best-known works for the theater. Extravagance and Energy With an evidently equal measure of extravagance and energy, Shaw's writings - multitudinous essays, articles, pieces of criticism and interviews with himself, among them - were political and philosophical, and encompassed concerns like pronounciation and punctuation. He wrote five novels at the misguided start of his career.

Of Shaw's mountains of letters, 3,000 have been published, with tens of thousands yet to be collected, according to Dr. Weintraub's estimation. To the criticism that his plays, like him, were ''talk, talk, talk,'' Shaw responded that the best ballets were dance, dance, dance. Speculating upon the ''Future Shaw,'' Dr. Nathan commented: ''He was so prescient that the era of true Shavian appreciation is still ahead. No one will have the final word. He was larger than life. There will be no end. He is ever renewing.'' As a Shavian spokesman in the present tense, Mr. Atkinson said, ''I'm carrying the torch for Shaw on Long Island.'' For more information on the weekend's events, call 516-546-4600. Photo; George Bernard Shaw performing in his play ''Getting Married.'' The little-known play, first presented in 1908, is being performed by the Long Island Stage

Question: The word ‘Shavian’ pertains to the work of which playwright?
Answer: George Bernard Shaw