the black plague essays

the black plague essays The Black Plague was a great European disaster that had many affects of the people living at that time. Though there may be controversy today over its precise significance, no one would to-day deny that the black plague was of the greatest economic and social importance as well as hideously dramatic in its progress. (form the book The Black Death by Phillip Ziegler) In the early 1330s the black plague started to form and the first place it struck was in China. The bubonic plague was basically fleas on rodents such as rats but, fleas can also transmit the disease to people as well as rats but mainly rats that the fleas transmitted this horrible plague into. The spread of the plague started in China very fast since that it was the most over populated country the plague naturally spread very quickly. Since China was the one of the busiest of the worlds trading nations, it was only a matter of time before the plague was spread into western Asia and Europe. In October of 1347, several Italian merchant ships returned from a trip to the Black Sea, one of the key links of trading was with China. Inside the ship there was already people suffering from the deadly virus. Soon when the ship arrives at there location, which is Sicily in Italy. Only within a number of days the disease spread to city and to the countryside. An eyewitness tells what happened and this is what he said: Realizing what a deadly disaster had come to them, the people quickly drove the Italians from their city. But the disease remained, and soon death was everywhere. fathers abandoned their sick sons. Lawyers refused to come and make out wills for the dying. Friars and nuns were left to care for the sick, and monasteries and convents were soon deserted, as they were stricken, too. Bodies were left in empty houses, and ...

The Basics of Back-Formation

The Basics of Back-Formation The Basics of Back-Formation The Basics of Back-Formation By Mark Nichol A back-formation is a new word produced by excising an affix, such as producing the verb secrete from the noun secretion. Many back-formations, like that one, acquire respectability, but others, especially more recent coinages, are considered nonstandard, so use them with caution. Back-formation can be seen as a form of clipping, though the distinction between one category and the other is that clipped forms (ad in place of advertisement, for example) are the same part of speech as the original form, whereas most back-formations are verbs formed from nouns. (Many back-formations are formed from words ending in -tion, such as automate and deconstruct.) Most back-formations eventually take their place among other standard terms, though they are often initially met with skepticism. For example, curate and donate, now accepted without question (and associated with the high pursuits of art and philanthropy, respectively), were once considered abominations. Newer back-formations that careful writers are wise to avoid include attrit, conversate, enthuse, incent, liaise, spectate, and surveil. These buzzwords are convenient hence their creation but they are widely considered inelegant, and in the case of at least a couple of them, concise synonyms are already available. (To spectate is to watch, and to surveil is to observe.) Sometimes, a back-formation is derived from a noun describing an action, as with attendee from attendance, or from a noun describing an actor, as with mentee from mentor. Many people consider such terms aberrant, and they are also ill advised in formal writing. Other back-formations derive from confusion about a base word. Cherry and pea both developed from the assumption that the original terms cherise and pease are plurals. More recently, biceps (and triceps) and kudos have been misunderstood as plurals, resulting in bicep, tricep, and kudo. Although cherry and pea were accepted without reservations into English long ago, bicep, tricep, and kudo are still considered nonstandard. Another class of back-formations are those shorn of their prefixes for humorous effect, such as gruntled from disgruntled and kempt from unkempt; rarely do such truncations enter the general lexicon. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Spelling category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:75 Synonyms for â€Å"Angry†How to Punctuate Descriptions of ColorsWords That Begin with Q