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Babel |
Also found in: Legal, Encyclopedia, Wikipedia, Hutchinson | 0.04 sec. |
Babel [ˈbeɪbəl] n 1. (Christian Religious Writings / Bible) Old Testament a. Also called Tower of Babel a tower presumptuously intended to reach from earth to heaven, the building of which was frustrated when Jehovah confused the language of the builders (Genesis 11:1-10) b. the city, probably Babylon, in which this tower was supposedly built 2. (often not capital) a. a confusion of noises or voices b. a scene of noise and confusion [from Hebrew Bābhél, from Akkadian Bāb-ilu, literally: gate of God] Babel2 n (Biographies / Babel, Issak Emmanuilovich (1894-1941) M, Russian, WRITING: short-story writer) Issak Emmanuilovich (iˈsak imənuˈiləvitʃ) 1894-1941, Russian short-story writer, whose works include Stories from Odessa(1924) and Red Cavalry (1926) Babel a confused mixture of sounds, voices, or languages; a confused assembly. See also charivari, hubbub, pandemonium. Examples: babel of follies, 1529; of past idle objurgations, 1884; of sectaries, 1731; babel towers of chimney, 1848.
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Eventually, perfection is reached and the rising and falling cease: "For there, between the two towers, the moon shines, clear and perfect, and the towers are no longer Babels ever rising and falling, but complete in their degree" (GT 195). This is Smithson the writer and reader, the same Smithson who famously wrote of "the illusory babels of language" and the intoxications of "dizzying syntaxes"; the Smithson who, in his drawing A Heap of Language, 1966, tirelessly piled word on word, synonym atop synonym, like Pelion upon Ossa ("Language / phraseology speech / tongue lingo vernacular . Quoting from the essay, Will argues that Wister "glorifies the triumph of the racially pure, 'untamed Saxon' cowboy" over the "'encroaching alien vermin, that turn our cities to Babels and our citizenship to a hybrid farce'" (Will 309). |
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