Crossword clues for commentary
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Commentary \Com"men*ta*ry\, n.; pl. Commentaries. [L. commentarius, commentarium, note book, commentary: cf. F. commentaire. See Comment, v. i.]
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A series of comments or annotations; esp., a book of explanations or expositions on the whole or a part of the Scriptures or of some other work.
This letter . . . was published by him with a severe commentary.
--Hallam. A brief account of transactions or events written hastily, as if for a memorandum; -- usually in the plural; as, Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic War.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1530s, from Middle French commentaire, or directly from Latin commentarius "notebook, annotation; diary, memoir," noun use of adjective, "relating to comments," from commentum (see comment (n.)). Perhaps the Latin noun is short for volumen commentarium. Originally in English as an adjective (early 15c.).
Wiktionary
n. 1 A series of comments or annotations; especially, a book of explanations or expositions on the whole or a part of some other work. 2 A brief account of transactions or events written hastily, as if for a memorandum; -- usually in the plural; as, Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic War. 3 An oral description of an event, especially broadcast by television or radio, as it occurs.
WordNet
n. a written explanation or criticism or illustration that is added to a book or other textual material; "he wrote an extended comment on the proposal" [syn: comment]
Wikipedia
Commentary or commentaries may refer to:
Commentary is a monthly American magazine on religion, Judaism, and politics, as well as social and cultural issues.
Founded by the American Jewish Committee in 1945, it was edited by Norman Podhoretz from 1960 to 1995. Besides its strong coverage of cultural issues, Commentary provided a strong voice for the anti-Stalinist left. Podhoretz, originally a liberal Democrat turned neoconservative, moved the magazine to the right and toward the Republican Party in the 1970s and 1980s.
Commentary has been described by Benjamin Balint as the "contentious magazine that transformed the Jewish left into the neoconservative right", while, according to historian Richard Pells, "no other journal of the past half century has been so consistently influential, or so central to the major debates that have transformed the political and intellectual life of the United States." According to Commentary itself, " Irving Kristol once called [it] the most influential magazine in Jewish history".
In philology, a commentary is a line-by-line or even word-by-word explication usually attached to an edition of a text in the same or an accompanying volume. It may draw on methodologies of close reading and literary criticism, but its primary purpose is to elucidate the language of the text and the specific culture that produced it, both of which may be foreign to the reader. Such a commentary usually takes the form of footnotes, endnotes, or separate text cross-referenced by line, paragraph or page.
Means of providing commentary on the language of the text include notes on textual criticism, syntax and semantics, and the analysis of rhetoric, literary tropes, and style. The aim is to remove, lessen or point out linguistic obstacles to reading and understanding the text.
If a text is historical, or is produced within a culture assumed to be of limited familiarity to a reader, a broader range of issues may require elucidation. These include, but are by no means limited to, biographical data pertaining to the author, historical events, customs and laws, technical terminology and facts of daily life, religious beliefs and philosophical perspectives, literary allusions, geographical settings, and cross-references to related passages in the same work, other works by the author, or sources used by the author.
Some commentaries from Classical Antiquity or the Middle Ages (more strictly referred to as scholia) are a valuable source of information otherwise unknown, including references to works that are now lost. Jerome provides a list of several commentaries that were in use during his days as a student in the 350s A.D. One of the most used of the ancient scholia today is that of Servius on Vergil’s Aeneid, written in the 4th century.
The production of commentaries began to flourish in the 16th century as part of the humanist project to recover the texts of antiquity, with its related boom in publishing. In the modern era, a commentary differs from an annotated edition aimed at students or the casual reader in that it attempts to address an exhaustive range of scholarly questions, many of which may be of concern or interest primarily to specialists. The commentator may take a position on variant readings of the text or on a point of scholarly dispute, but arguments are usually succinct, a paragraph or less than a page in length.
Usage examples of "commentary".
We sit side-by-side on the sofa watching the calm, perfectly-coifed anchorperson coordinate her own commentary with cuts to correspondents in various parts of North America and abroad.
Los Angeles, who filed a lengthy and lurid commentary on the Lynch report.
Among his many writings is a translation of the entire Zohar from Aramaic to modern Hebrew, together with a detailed commentary on the text.
Probably five thousand bees had stung the polyethylene, but no more than a hundred had lost their stings - itself a commentary on the exceptional strength of the giants which would live to sting again.
Ugly suspicions and dark rumorsfed by Crush Bonbon and his outrageous, dangerous radio commentary.
It looked as though the commentary was for Brits rather than Americans.
As for Upton and other such fellows, they are merely musical chautauquans, and their tedious commentaries have little more value than the literary criticisms in the religious weeklies.
There was a screen showing a succession of faces and scenes that had somehow gotten out of sync with the commentary, so a picture of the great Willie Nelson was identified as someone called Cornpone Cawson, the Hayseed Hick.
The plays of Shakespeare, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and of all the dramatists, are a perfect commentary on the fashions of the day, but a knowledge of the fashions is necessary to a perfect enjoyment of the plays.
TV commentary that night featured detailed analysis by criminologists, gastroenterologists, and psychologists on the subject of vomiting in general and whether doing it in the presence of law enforcement is a reliable indicator of guilt.
LOT From preliminary transcribing, we know the scrolls include manuals of discipline, hymnbooks, Biblical commentaries, and apocalyptic writings.
He had given up hyperrealism and had gone in for social commentary in faded hues.
Sadolet was not only reputed the finest Latinist of the age, but he was the most gracious of the Roman prelates, a friend of Erasmus, an admirer of Contarini, and the author of a commentary on St.
Barnes, a standard author, whose commentaries have been adopted by the Presbyterian Board, takes the position that there can be no question but that Melchizedek was a Canaanite.
But no comparable outpouring of progun commentary can be heard in the wake of incidents such as the Carpenter family massacre.