A Dictionary of Cont..

weather 550
ing to make ambiguous. It is also used colloquially
(perhaps a portmanteau combination of
wiggle and greasy, with a suggestion of the
weasel’s cunning and ferocity) to mean to get
out of something by shady means (He’ll weasel
out of his promise; he never kept one yet unless
it was to his advantage to do so).
weather, everybody talks about . . . It was
Charles Dudley Warner, not Mark Twain, who
first said, Everybody talks about the weather,
but nobody does anything about it. It was a fine
drollery on its first utterance, a profound criticism
of the “let’s-do-something-about-it” school
of moral zealots with which the country then
abounded, a pensive reminder that we are not
omnipotent and that at least some of the troubles
of our proud and angry dust are from eternity
and will not fail. As a witticism it merited the
first five or six hundred million repetitions it received.
But now that it has been said countless
billions of times (and always ascribed to the
wrong man), it deserves a rest. This is something
we can do something about.
weather the storm. As a term for surviving some
period of stress and danger, weathering the
storm is a clicht?
weave. The past tense is wove. The participle is
woven or wove. A past tense and participle
weaved is heard but is not standard when applied
to actual weaving. However, this is the preferred
form when the word means “follow a winding
course,” as in the drunken man weaved his way
through the crowd.
web. See woof.
wed. The past tense is wed or wedded. The participle
is also wed or wedded. In the United
States wed is the preferred form for the past
tense and the participle. In Great Britain wedded
is preferred. Wedded is the preferred form in
both countries when the word is used as an adjective,
as in (I wedded life and I am not wedded
to the idea.
Actually, this verb is seldom used in contemporary
American speech, except in the expression
the newly weds. We ordinarily prefer the
word marry.
wedded bliss, as a term for ecstatic happiness in
marriage, is a cliche. It is now used almost entirely
in heavy jocularity, but it is nonetheless a
clichC.
wedding; marriage; nuptials. Marriage is the
simple and usual term for the ceremony which
unites couples in wedlock. It has no implication
BS to circumstances and is without emotional
connotations (They announced the marriage of
their daughter. Marriage is a basic social institution).
Wedding has strong emotional, even
sentimental, connotations, and suggests the accompanying
festivities, whether elaborate or
simple (Will you dance at my wedding?). Marriage
may be used to describe the union of a
wedded couple throughout its entire duration;
wedding is restricted solely to the ceremony of
union and the immediate social events. Nupfials
is a formal and lofty word applied to the ceremony
and attendant social events. It does not
have emotional connotations but strongly implies
surroundings characteristic of wealth, rank,
pomp, and grandeur (Millions of Britons bought
newspapers to read of the royal nuptials). Nuptials
is too elegant a word to be applied to the
ordinary wedding ceremony.
weep. The past tense is wept. The participle is
also wept. See cry.
weft. See woof.
weighty and heavy both mean weighing a great
deal, but heavy is the usual term. In figurative
senses their meanings differ. Weighty means
burdensome (He had weighty cares of ofice)
or important (The weighty problems of the
o&e seemed to find the;r best solutions on the
golf course). Heavy may also mean burdensome,
yet the sense is of very great burdens (Heavy
taxes made the amassing of a competence almost
impossible). It is sometimes used as a synonym
for great when the greatness has a figurative
sense of burdening, pressing down (The whole
family sustained heavy losses in the stock market
crash) and is frequently used to mean sorrowful
(One can only view these ravages with a heavy
heart).
welkin. It’s been about five hundred years since
ordinary people in everyday speech referred to
the sky as the welkin. The word seemed to have
a fascination for poets, however, and remained
in their vocabularies up into the nineteenth century,
though Shakespeare (Twelfth Night, III,
1, 65) was apparently amused at it as an elegant
variation and Mark Twain (Tom Sawyer
Abroad, Chapter V) had Tom Sawyer use the
word and justify it as pure ornament, “like the
ruffles on a shirt.” To make the welkin ring (or
howl, or crack, or roar), as a hyperbole for some
clamorous noise, is a venerable clichC.
well. This word is, first of all, the adverbial
equivalent of the adjective good and has the
comparative and superlative forms better and
best.
In standard English the word good cannot be
used to qualify a verb, as in she sings good. But
the word well may be used after verbs of appearing
where the formal rules of grammar
require the adjective good. That is, we may say
it sounds good or it sounds well and it looks
good on you or it looks well on you. See linking
verbs.
Well sometimes means in good health. Here
the word has the same comparative form that it
has when it means “good.” We say Rowan is betfer
today not Rownn is Weller. But it does not
have the superlative form best. If a superlative is
used, it is &lest, as in the wellest of them all,
but this form is auestionable. In literary English
we are compelled to say healthiest. In &e U&ed
States well meaning healthy is thoroughly established
as an adjective and we speak of a well
baby. In Great Britain the word still has an
ambiguous status. It is not used immediately
before a noun, which is the primary position for
an adjective, but only after a verb, as in the baby
is well, in a position where both adjectives and
adverbs may appear. The comparative form is