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The term fumblerules was coined in a list of such rules compiled by William Safire on Sunday, 4 November 1979, [3] [4] in his column "On Language" in The New York Times. Safire later authored a book titled Fumblerules: A Lighthearted Guide to Grammar and Good Usage, which was reprinted in 2005 as How Not to Write: The Essential Misrules of Grammar.
William Lewis Safire (/ ˈ s æ f aɪər /; né Safir; December 17, 1929 – September 27, 2009 [1] [2]) was an American author, columnist, journalist, and presidential speechwriter. He was a long-time syndicated political columnist for The New York Times and wrote the "On Language" column in The New York Times Magazine about popular etymology ...
Some of the agencies still exist today, while others have merged with other departments and agencies or were abolished. The agencies were sometimes referred to as alphabet soup . Libertarian author William Safire notes that the phrase "gave color to the charge of excessive bureaucracy."
It isn't.Every few years it seems, somebody -- usually a politician, occasionally a writer -- will come up with the notion that the United States should abolish the penny. It makes sense at first ...
In 1969, that's exactly what speechwriter William Safire imagined when waiting for the Apollo 11 to land on the moon. Safire penned a memo for President Nixon's Chief of Staff, H. R. Haldeman , in ...
When told of the savings made by suspending the penny, support jumped to 84 percent. [30] Historical popular support – A poll conducted in June 2006 by USA Today/Gallup, found that 55% of the American public considered the penny to be a useful coin, while 43% of those surveyed were in favor of abolishing the coin. [31]
Eric Partridge and William Safire dated the phrase to the 1930s or 1940s. [5] Comedy. As a practical joke, the trick is an example of anti-humor or surreal comedy.
The term retronym, a neologism composed of the combining forms retro-(from Latin retro, [3] "before") + -nym (from Greek ónoma, "name"), was coined by Frank Mankiewicz in 1980 and popularized by William Safire in The New York Times Magazine.