ORATORY 2 8 7

Pollyanna The heroine of stories for children written by the American author Eleanor H. Porter (1868-1920), Pollyanna is a perpetually cheerful girl who teaches everyone she meets to play the 'just being glad' game: 'the game was to just find something about everything to be glad about—no matter what 'twas'. The name Pollyanna has come to stand for an unflagging (and often excessively saccharine) cheerfulness, an ability to find apparent cause for happiness in the most unpromising situations. The term often seems to be accompanied by a sense of apology, a recognition that such optimism may seem to others rather naive.

Hadn't they been happy here? After all the bedsits and borrowed apartments and shitty pensiones, hadn't this been the dream place? . . . Had he lived in some Pollyanna blur all this time? Was he missing something? Was she miserable and bored? And worse?

TIM wiNTON The Riders, 1994

I don't want to sound too Pollyanna-ish, but anyone getting autumn state-of-the- world blues might tune in to BBC Radio's 1995 Young Writers' Festival, First Bite, which has just ended its first week. If the pieces I heard are any gauge of the creativity to come, then the grounds for optimism are abundant.

The Guardian, 1995

Oratory

This theme is chiefly concerned with the content of what is said. Another

theme, Speech, deals with the distinctive qualities of a person's speaking

voice.

CatO Marcus Porcius Cato (234-149 BC) was a Roman statesman, orator, and writer. After visiting Carthage in 175 BC, he was so impressed by the dangerous power of the Carthaginians that he afterwards ended every speech in the Senate with the words 'Delenda est Carthago' ('Carthage must be destroyed').

Other editors, who were disguised neither as preachers nor as farmers, donned newsprint togas and appeared as modern Catos, ready to shed the last drop of their ink in defence of those virtues which they believed to be the exclusive property of the party not in power.

ROBERTSON DAViEs Leaven of Malice, 1954

Winston Churchill Winston Churchill (1874-1965) was a British politician and prime minister who led the coalition government during the Second World War. He was a gifted orator whose wartime speeches included many famous passages such as: 'We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.'

'Yes. The truth is the last repository of youth. And while a man is prepared to look truth in the face and see the mirror of his defects, let no man call him old.' And

Dark Ages The term 'the Dark Ages' has sometimes been used to designate the period in the West between the fall of the Roman Empire and the high Middle Ages (that is, from about the 5th to the nth century), so called because it used to be regarded as a time of relative unenlightenment and obscurity. In other contexts the term can suggest any unenlightened or ignorant period or, when used humorously, any little-regarded period before the present. To 'live in the Dark Ages' is to be old-fashioned or prejudiced in one's behaviour and attitudes.

Jim's brow darkened. 'Look, old son. The law's no place for Luddites. We're in business, remember? We need to compete, to provide a decent service! 'I haven't heard Kevin or Jeannie Walters complaining! 'You've done a superb job, I'm the first to say so. But we must move with the times. We can't keep living in the Dark Ages!

MARTIN EDWARDS Yesterday's Papers, 1994

Forth Bridge The Forth Bridge is a cantilevered railway bridge built in 1890 across the Forth of Firth, linking Fife and Lothian on the east coast of Scotland. The bridge requires constant maintenance and the expression 'painting the Forth Bridge' alludes to the idea that as soon as workers have finished painting the bridge, they immediately have to start repainting it.

So a treaty that took ten years to negotiate is out of date before it even comes into force. What you might call the Forth Bridge theory of arms control.

BBC Radio 4, 1995

Jurassic In geology, the Jurassic period lasted from about 213 to 144 million years ago. Dinosaurs were abundant and attained their maximum size. Popularized by Steven Spielberg's blockbuster dinosaur film Jurassic Park (1992), the term is sometimes used informally to mean 'extremely out of date or antiquated'.

Call me Jurassic, but I couldn't care less about authenticity and immediacy when I'm

engrossed in a good story.

The Observer, 1997

Noah's Ark • See ARK.

Rip Van Winkle The hero of Washington Irving's story Rip Van Winkle (1820), Rip falls asleep in the Catskill mountains in New York State, and wakes after twenty years to find the world completely changed. He has, for example, completely missed the War of American Independence. Someone who has remained oblivious to social and political changes over an extended period can be said to be 'Rip-Van-Winkleish'.

A political Rip van Winkle who had never watched television and read neither newspapers nor books until the last years of his term, Kim cannot believe, even less comprehend, this changed world. His only reading material until 1990 had been the Bible.

ANDREW HICGINS in The Observer, 1997