A Dictionary of Cont..

marvel
any undertaking (He was a victim of the Dieppe
raid), or a living creature sacrificed in religious
rites (the victim led lowing to the altar).
marvel; miracle. A marvel is something to wonder
at, a prodigy, something astonishing (It was
a marvel that any of the passengers escaped.
Both engines were on fire when the wheels
touched the runway). A miracle is a marvel, but
it is more; it is something which has an effect in
the physical world which surpasses all known or
human powers and is, therefore, ascribed to
supernatural agency (Christ’s first miracle was
changing water into wine). People who jump
off Brooklyn Bridge and survive, or go over
Niagara Falls in barrels, perform marvels but
not miracles; while far less spectacular natural
happenings, such as the provision by certain female
insects for the young which they will never
live to know, may be described as miracles.
Whether a given event is properly a miracle or
a marvel is disputable; the employment of one
word instead of another is often dependent upon
the attitude of mind of the speaker. But there is
no doubt that a continuous use of miracle to describe
any coincidence or amazing happening is
vulgar.
masculine. See male.
mass. One sense of muss is the main body, bulk,
or greater part of anything. The word thus becomes
an equivalent of majority (In 1944 the
mass of American military strength was in Europe).
This use, though occasionally decried, is
now standard.
massacre and slaughter, whether as nouns or
transitive verbs, imply violent and bloody methods
of killing. Massacre designates the unnecessary,
indiscriminate killing of a number of human
beings, as in barbarous warfare or persecution,
or for revenge or plunder (It was assumed
that the settlers were massacred by the Indians:
no trace of them was ever found). Massacre may
not be used to describe the killing of one person.
Slaughter, like butcher, is a term usually applied
to the killing of animals and gains some of its
violent horror when applied to human beings
from that fact. An individual may be slaughtered
(Prism wns slaughtered ns he clung to the altar)
and so may great numbers of people. Massacre
carries a suggestion that the victims were innocent
and helpless or unresisting; whereas soldiers
may be slaughtered in battle if the carnage is
sufficiently widespread and fierce.
masseur and masseuse are both borrowed from
the French but now fully naturalized in our
language and therefore not to be italicized in
writing. A masseur is a man who practices massage,
a masseuse is a woman.
mass nouns. A singular noun is used to refer to
one thing and a plural noun to refer to more
than one, as boy and boys, book and books. But
some nouns, such as butter, sunlight, Latin, oxygen,
are neither singular nor plural in meaning.
They do not refer to precise countable things but
to something formless and uncountable. Words
of this kind are called muss nouns. In contrast,
words that refer to countables are called unit
nouns. Names of abstractions, such as beauty,
justice, childhood, arithmetic, logic, are mass
nouns, but so are the names of such concrete
things as gunpowder, lettuce, mud, dust, and
ammunition.
Most mass nouns, like the examples given so
far, are grammatical singulars. These are always
treated as singulars. They are used with a singular
verb and can be qualified by the, this, or that.
But they do not form plurals and they cannot be
qualified by the article a. Also, unlike singulars,
they can be used without any qualifiers. We can
say sunlight is good for you, although we cannot
say book is good.
When a word that is ordinarily a mass noun,
such as fur, space, injustice, is qualified by a, as
in a fur, a space, an injustice, it is being used in
a slightly different sense. In this new sense it is a
unit noun, it refers to a countable thing, and can
have a plural form, such as furs, spaces, injustices.
Similarly, a word that is ordinarily a
unit noun can be used without a as a mass noun.
Lamb is a unit noun in there is a little lamb in
the meadow and a mass noun in there is a little
lamb in the icebox. In the first sentence a qualifies
lamb and makes it a unit noun. In the second
sentence a qualifies little and lamb is unqualified.
Expressions like this, with more than one meaning,
are very common in English. But they are
not ambiguous in context-that is, they are not
misunderstood-and are not noticed unless one
is bored and looking for trouble.
Not all mass nouns are grammatical singulars.
Some nouns, such as munitions, news, measles,
riches, savings, morals, are plural in form but do
not refer to countable things. These require special
attention. They are mass nouns, not true
plurals.
Words of this kind do not have a corresponding
singular form and cannot be used with a
numeral, which would suggest several singulars.
As a rule, these words cannot be used with any
qualifier that suggests countables, such as many,
several, few. That is, in speaking of a savings
account we cannot say how many savings has
he? When such words are not the subject of a
verb, they can be qualified by words used with
singular mass nouns, such as much and little. We
may say how much savings has he? or he has
very little savings. In these respects, plural mass
nouns are being treated as if they were singular
mass nouns. In the case of some words, such as
news, hydraulics, and economics, mass nouns
with plural form are treated in every respect like
singular mass nouns. That is, they are also followed
by a singular verb, qualified by this and
that, and referred to by it, as in this news is good;
where did you hear it? But more often mass
nouns with a plural form keep some of their
plural characteristics. That is, they are followed
by a plural verb, qualified by these and those,
and referred to by they or them, as in these savings
are all Z have; Z would hate to lose them.
Many plural mass nouns are like savings and
morals. They are related to unit nouns that have
a singular and a plural form but a slightly differ-