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Examples
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With a deep-seated, all-pervasive political rebarbativeness, social dislocation and disconsolation, economic precariousness occasioned by segmental avarice and structural myopia, the geopolitical entity called Nigeria totters on the brink of a jagged-toothed precipice.
Vanguard 2009
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It’s also one of the best routes to understanding how London came by his extreme views (he was a writer who knew about injustice and exposed it even as he sometimes typified it), perhaps because Williamson doesn’t shy away from confronting their rebarbativeness.
Cover to Cover 2008
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It’s also one of the best routes to understanding how London came by his extreme views (he was a writer who knew about injustice and exposed it even as he sometimes typified it), perhaps because Williamson doesn’t shy away from confronting their rebarbativeness.
Cover to Cover 2008
kwieland commented on the word rebarbativeness
From the OED: rebarbative (Adj): Repellent; unattractive; objectionable. Derived form: rebarbativeness. < French rébarbatif repellent, disagreeable (14th cent. in Middle French) < Middle French rebarber to oppose, stand up to (13th cent. in Old French; < re- RE- prefix + barbe BARB n.1, hence probably literally ‘to stand beard to beard against’) + -atif -ATIVE suffix.
Here is a snippet from a recent article in which this word was used.
“It’s not just because both writers are from the slums of Oakland, California, that Williamson is such a passionate advocate for London. His white-hot scorn for literary fashion and indeed for most conventional criticism lights up nearly every sentence here. London managed to be both a socialist and a fascist, both a fervent champion of the oppressed and a militant racist, and Williamson revels in his hero’s contradictions. More than that, he identifies with London to a sometimes alarming extent, making this one of the least politically correct texts of our time. It’s also one of the best routes to understanding how London came by his extreme views (he was a writer who knew about injustice and exposed it even as he sometimes typified it), perhaps because Williamson doesn’t shy away from confronting their rebarbativeness.”
Anonymous (June, 2008). Cover to cover—Biography and memoir: Oakland, Jack London, and me, by Eric Miles Williamson (Texas Review Press). The Atlantic, p. 114. Retrieved on June 8, 2008 from http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200806/new-books
June 27, 2009