Having Words

It’s said that Samuel Johnson resorted to unconventional methods to win a debate with a Billingsgate fishwife: He called her a noun, a pronoun, an adverb, and she hesitated. He vigorously charged her with being conjunction and preposition. She wavered. And when at length with stentorian voice he accused her to her face of being a parallelopipedon, she broke in disorder and fled in the utmost…