SPIVAK—
Feminism and Critical Theory
[Lecture
notes by Dr. S. Sree Kumar]
As the translator
of Jacques Derrida’s De la Grammatologie (as Of Grammatology) she
helped to introduce deconstructive critical strategies not only into literary
criticism but also into wider cultural analysis.
Spivak’s introduction to the translation
provides one of the most cogent (convincing,
logical) accounts of
deconstruction’s potential political agenda = the emphasis placed on
deconstruction’s capacity to unmake apparently agreed ‘truths’ (good / evil,
God / devil, man / woman—unmaking binaries, privileged term trying to displace
the other—process continuing—trace) by reference to their ultimate derivation
from linguistic structures alone.
Our
confidence in finite (limited,
restricted, fixed, predetermined)
meanings can be sustained (continued,
examples like ‘meaning’, ‘cat’) only
if we ignore the constant capacity of the language to suggest ‘supplementary’
or excess semantic associations.
Spivak’s allegiance [loyalty, commitment, faithfulness] to the above perceptions is at best
preliminary. She believed that the persistent deferral of meaning [difference,
differance] will not of itself ensure a more liberal sexual politics or the
dismantling of sexist socio-political structures.
To face such issues from a wider cultural
perspective ( a perspective that would not ignore the voices of the otherwise
silenced Third World women) we have to
understand the possible antagonisms (rivalry, opposition, hostility) between feminist, Marxist and deconstructive readings (interpretations).
Spivak’s subaltern perspective—the
politically dispossessed could be voiceless, written out of the historical
record largely because the traces of their activity were regarded as
non-cultural, or at least without structure, and thus without volition (wish, will, desire, preference, choice). She illustrates how an exclusively textual
route towards understanding non-Western customs is doomed as these would
replicate occidental patterns of understanding: there is no space from where
the subaltern subject can speak. Spivak believed that the heterodox power of
the supplement derives from its sense of unassimilable marginality.
- These varied considerations are
exemplified in the essay “Feminism and Critical Theory” (In Other Worlds).
- Throughout she tries to stand outside
a consistent theoretical template to understand the material forces that
give rise to particular feminisms.
- The essays in other worlds are
organized in chronological sections, from
Ø
‘Literature’
to
Ø
‘Into
the world’ to
Ø
‘Entering
the third world’
- This arrangement corresponds to an
autobiographical mapping of her critical
Development.
- The essay “Feminism and Critical
Theory” is placed at the last in ‘Literature’ section, and shows her
awareness of what is needed to develop a sense of ‘worldly’ and ‘third
worldly’ voices and pressures.
Feminism
and Critical Theory
At the outset,
Spivak summarises her essay thus:
The itinerary [programme, schedule] of her thinking
about the relationships among feminism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, and
deconstruction is significant as the configurations (arrangement, formation) of
these fields continue to change. And in
this essay her attempt is to mark and reflect upon the way these developments
are shown in her own work.
& The
first section of the essay deals with a talk she gave several years ago.
& The second section represents a reflection of
that earlier work.
& The
third section is an intermediate moment.
& The
fourth is the present moment.
Section 1
Spivak says that she cannot speak of feminism in
general. She can only speak about what she does as a woman in literary
criticism.
Ö Her own definition of a woman is very
simple. That rests on the word ‘man’. Some may say that this is a reactionary
(backward looking) position.
Ö But this is the lesson she has learned from
deconstruction. No rigorous definition of anything is possible. If one wants,
one can go on deconstructing the binary opposition— man/woman— and prove that
it is an opposition that displaces itself.
Ö Yet she feels that definitions are
necessary in order to keep us going to allow us to take a stand.
Ö Her present definition of woman is not
based on the ‘putative essence’ (accepted, acknowledged) of woman but in terms
of words currently in use. She fixes on the word ‘man’ though she believes that
no definition of anything is ever possible.
Most critical theory in Spivak’s part of the
establishment [Lacan, Derrida, Foucault, Bathes] sees the text as that area of
the discourse of human sciences—Humanities—in which the problem of the discourse of human sciences is available.
[In other kinds of discourses (physics, mathematics)
there is a move towards the final truth of a situation. Literature shows that
the truth of a human situation is that it is not possible to find it. In the
general field of Humanities there is a search for solutions. But in literary
discourse the playing out the problem is the solution]
The Problem of Human Discourse
Ü The problem is in three shifting
‘concepts’—language, world, consciousness.
The
world we know is organized as a language
The
consciousness with which we operate is structured as a language
We
are operated even by those languages we do not possess.
Ü The category of world embraces the
categories of language and consciousness.
Ü The category of world itself is created by
the categories of language and consciousness.
Ü Since we are thinking about the human
beings’ control over the production of language, the figure that will be more
useful is ‘writing’.
Ü In ‘writing’ there is the absence of
producer and receiver.
Ü Thus ‘text’ is a safe figure. It is a weave
of knowing and not-knowing which is what knowing is.
Marx and Freud
Marx is read as a theorist of the world (history and
society). He is read as a text of the forces of labour and
production-circulation-distribution.
Freud is read as a theorist of the self. He is read as
a text of consciousness and unconscious. This is human textuality. It can be
seen as world and self. It is the representation of a world in terms of a self
at play with other selves and generating the representation. Thus every thing
is implicated (caught up, mixed up) in ‘intertextuality’.
This concept of textuality is not a reduction of the
world to linguistic texts, books, or a tradition composed of books.
Spivak is not speaking of Marxist or psychoanalytic
criticism as a reductive enterprise which analyses every book in terms of
Marxist or a psychoanalytical canon. In her way of thinking the discourse of
the literary text is a general configuration of textuality. Here the solution is the unavailability of
unified solution to a unified, homogeneous, generating or receiving,
consciousness. This unavailability is
not faced but dodged and the problem apparently solved, in terms of unifying
concepts like ‘man’ or sex, race or class consciousness.
Non-reductive methods are implicit in both of them.
But Marx and Freud also seem to argue in terms of a mode of evidence and
demonstration. Spivak thinks that their descriptions of world and self are
based on inadequate evidence. “In terms of this conviction, I would like to fix
upon the idea of alienation in Marx and the idea of normality and health in
Freud”, writes Spivak.
Marx’s use of use-value,
exchange-value and surplus value
& Use- value is pertained to a thing as it is
directly consumed by an agent.
& Exchange-value (money) is not related to
direct use, but is assessed in terms of what it can be exchanged for in either
labour-power or money.
& By making the worker work longer than
necessary for subsistence wages or by means of labour-saving machinery, the
buyer of the labourer’s work gets more
(in exchange) than the worker needs for his subsistence while he makes
the thing. This ‘more worth’ is surplus-value.
Women, use, exchange and surplus.
Woman in the traditional social situation
produces more than she is getting in terms of her subsistence, and therefore is
a continual source of the production of surpluses for the man who owns her, or by the man for the capitalist who owns
his labour- power. The
contemporary woman, when she seeks financial compensation for housework, seeks
the ‘abstraction’ (removal of something from something else) of use-value into
exchange-value. The situation of the domestic workplace is not one of ‘pure
exchange’. Here some questions arise:--
- What
is the use-value of unremunerated woman’s work for husband or family?
- Is
the willing entry into the wage structure a curse or blessing?
- How
should women fight the idea, universally accepted by men, that wages are the only mark of
value-producing work?
- What
would be the implications of denying women entry into the capitalist
economy?
Though these are important questions, they
do not broaden Marxist theory from a feminist point of view. For that the idea
of externalisation or alienation is of more importance. [The worker’s
alienation from the product of his labour under capitalism is a particular case
of alienation]
u Within the capitalist system, the labour
process externalizes itself and the worker as commodities. This is fracturing
the human being’s relationship to himself and his work as commodities.
u Spivak argues that , the picture of this human relationship to
production is incomplete in terms of the physical, emotional, legal, custodial,
and sentimental situation of the woman’s product, the child.
u The possession of a real place of
production in the womb situates the woman as an agent in any theory of
production.
u Marx’s dialectics of
externalisation-alienation is inadequate to explain the relationship between a
woman and her child. This is because a fundamental human relationship to a
product and labour is not taken into account.
u Spivak does not mean that if the Marxian
account of externalisation-alienation were rewritten from a feminist
perspective, the special interest of childbirth, childbearing, and childrearing
would be included.
Need to interpret reproduction within a
Marxian Problematic
In both matrilineal and patrilineal societies the legal
possession of the child is an inalienable fact of the property right of the man
who ‘produces the child’. The man retains legal property rights over the
product of a woman’s body. [The custodial decision is a sentimental questioning
of man’s right—the struggle over abortion rights etc.]
Spivak says that women must engage and correct
the theory of production and alienation upon which the Marxist text is based
and with which it functions. Much Marxist feminism works on analogy of
use-value, exchange-value, and surplus-value relationships. Marx’s own writing on women and children see
to alleviate their conditions in terms of a desexualized labour force. If thee
is a rewriting it would be harder to sketch out the rules of economy and social
ethics. In fact, deconstruction would question the definitions. In Marx one
would find a major transgression where rules for humanity and ethics are based
on inadequate evidence.
Marx’s texts, including Capital, presuppose an
ethical theory: alienation of labour must be undone because it undermines the
agency of the subject in his work and his property. Spivak suggests that if the
nature and history of alienation, labour, and the production of property are
re-examined in terms of women’s work and childbirth, it can lead us to a
reading of Marx beyond Marx.
Moving
into Freud
One way of moving into Freud is in terms of
his notion of the nature of pain as the deferment (postponement, suspension, adjournment, delaying,
putting off) of pleasure. [Beyond
the Pleasure Principle]. Freud’s spectacular mechanics [procedure, technicality, workings] of imagined, anticipated, and avoided
pain write the subject’s history and theory, and constantly broach [approach, mention, introduce, raise] the never-quite-defined concepts of
normality—anxiety, inhibition, paranoia, schizophrenia, melancholy, mourning.
u I would like to suggest that in the womb, a
tangible place of production, there is the possibility that pain exists within
the concepts of normality and productivity. [This is not to sentimentalize the
pain of childbirth]. The phenomenal identity of pleasure ad unpleasure should
not be operated only through the logic of repression. The opposition
pleasure/pain is questioned in the physiological ‘normality’ of woman.
If one were to look at the
never-quite-defined concepts of normality and health that run through and
submerged in Freud’s texts, one would like to redefine the nature of pain. Pain
does not operate in the same way in men and in women. Once again,
Deconstruction will make it very hard to devise the rules.
Penis
Envy
Freud’s best-known determinant of femininity is
penis-envy. In an essay in
the New Introductory Lectures, Freud argues that the little girl is a
little boy before she discovers sex. As Luce Irigaray and other have shown, Freud
does not take the womb into account. Woman’s mood, since she carries the
womb as well as carried by it, should be corrective.
u Women must chart the itinerary of womb-envy
in the production of a theory of consciousness—the idea of the womb as a place
of production is avoided both in Marx as in Freud.
u In Freud, the genital stage is
pre-eminently phallic, not clitoral or vaginal. This particular gap in Freud is significant.
Everywhere there is a non-confrontation of the womb as a workshop, except to
produce a surrogate [substitute,
proxy, replacement] penis.
u The idea is not to declare the ideal of
penis-envy as rejectable,
but to make available the idea of a womb-envy as something that interacts with
the ideal of penis-envy to determine human sexuality and the production of
society.
Woman cannot ignore these ideas saying that criticism
is neuter and practical. But even the most practical critic could not avoid the
notions of world and consciousness which are inalienably linked with the great
male texts of Marx and Freud. Part of the feminist critical enterprise is to
see that these texts do not become adversaries or models from which women take
their ideas and revise or reassess.
& These texts must be rewritten so that there
is new material for the grasping of the production and determination of
literature within the general production and determination of consciousness and
society.
& If women continue to work in this way, the
common currency of the understanding of society will change. Te coining of new
money is necessary. Such work can be supplemented by research into women’s
writing and research into the conditions of women in the past. This can
infiltrate the male academy and redo the terms of our understanding of the
context and substance of literature as part of the human enterprise.
Section II
Spivak says that the dimension of race is missing in her
earlier remarks. She would prefer her work to be sensitive to gender, race and
class.
The main problem in American feminist criticism
is the identification of racism with the racism in America Third World remains constituted by the hegemonic First World intellectual practices.
Spivak’s attitude towards Freud at present involves a
broader critique (analysis, assessment, evaluation) of his entire
project. It is a critique of not only Freud’s masculism but of nuclear-familial (related to or
typical of a family) psychoanalytical theories of the constitution of the
sexed subject.
& Spivak’s concern with the production of
colonial discourse touches her critique of Freud as well as most Western
Feminist challenges to Freud.
& The extended or corporate family is a
socioeconomic organization which makes sexual constitution complicit (involved with other people in something
wrong or illegal) with
historical and political economy. When read in such a way world literature,
itself accessible only to a few, is not
governed but the concrete universals of a network of archetypes but by a
textuality of material-ideological-psycho-sexual production.
American lesbian
feminists reacted to this. They welcomed the discourse of the clitoris.
According to them in the open-ended definition of phallus/semination as
organically omnipotent the only recourse (something that can provide help in a difficult
situation) is to name the
clitoris as orgasmically phallic and to call the uterus the reproductive
extension of the phallus. There is no privilege in being a heterosexual woman.
Spivak sees this position as resulting from
giving too much stress on the physiology. Freud’s situation of the clitoris as
‘little penis’ may have something to do with this. Spivak’s attempt to put
First World Lesbianism in its place is not because of pride in female
heterosexuality. She would like to see the clitoris as a short-hand for women’s
excess in all areas of reproduction and practice, an excess which must be
brought under control.
Spivak’s attitude to Marxism
Spivak recognizes the antagonism between Marxism and
feminism.
Q Hardcore Marxism at best dismisses and at
worst patronizes the importance of woman’s struggle.
Q The history of European feminism in its
opposition to Bolshevik and Social Democratic women and the conflict between
the suffrage movement and the union movement must be taken into account.
Q Spivak feels that the ‘essential truth’ of
Marxism or feminism cannot be separated from their history.
Sexual reproduction and the critique of wage-labour
Q If sexual reproduction is seen as the
production of a product by a determinate means (conjunction of
semination-ovulation) in a determinate fashion then two original Marxist
categories would be questioned—use value and surplus value.
Q The child is not a commodity. It has no
immediate use value. Direct exchange is not possible.
Q The premise (principle, idea) that difference between subsistence-wage and
labour-power’s potential for production (origin of accumulation of capital) can
be advanced only if reproduction is seen as identical with subsistence-wage.
Q These insights take the critique of
wage-labour into unexpected directions.
Wage theory and women’s work
Women’s work has continuously survived
within the varieties of capitalism and in other historic and geographical modes
of production. It is the long history of
women’s work which is a sustained example of zero-work: work not only outside
of wage-work, but ‘outside’ of the definitive modes of production. The
displacement required here is a transvaluation.
Q With psychoanalytic feminism through an
invocation of history and politics, Spivak has come to psychoanalysis in
colonialism. From Marxist feminism, through an invocation of the economic text
Spivak has come to New Imperialism.
Q Spivak says that she is still moved by the
reversal-displacement morphology of deconstruction. The deconstructive view
keeps her resisting an essentialist freezing of the concepts of gender, race,
and class. Deconstruction will not allow the establishment of a hegemonic
‘global theory’ of feminism.
Q Rather than deconstruction opening a way
for feminists the figure and discourse of women had opened the way for Derrida
as well. his beginning discourse of women surfaced in Spurs.
Section III
This section of the essay is a re-reading of Margaret Drabble’s novel, The
Waterfall. Drabble creates an extreme situation in the novel. The main
question here is, ‘Why does love happen?’. Drabble situates her protagonist,
Jane, in the most inaccessible privacy, at the moment of birthing, alone by
choice. Lucy, her cousin and James, Lucy’s husband are watching over her as she
delivers a girl child. James faces the problem of relating to the birthing
woman through the ‘birth of another man’s child’. Jane looks and smells
dreadful. There is blood and swat on the crumpled sheets and yet love happens.
It is possible that Drabble is taking up the challenge of feminine ‘passivity’
as a source of strength.
There are other views as well. Jane is very provisional and
self-suspending in her attitude and Spivak quotes elaborately from the novel to
prove these points. In her monologues Jane analyses the reasons for the love.
Drabble considers the problem of making women rivals in terms of the man who
possesses them. But some form of female bonding takes place because of the
baby. Jane cannot deny the pleasure she gets when she sees James holding the
baby in his arms: “The man I loved and the child whom I had given birth”.
The loose ending of the novel makes it an extreme case. Is this love
going to last bringing happiness to Jane and James? Or is it liberated,
over-protesting its own impermanence, and thus falling in within the times? At
the melodramatic ending of the novel, Lucy understands everything and
everything is reduced to a humdrum (dull, boring, unexciting)
kind of double life.
The novel gives many answers—
Q necessity if all fails,
Q or perhaps random contingency,
Q attempt not to rivalize women,
Q blood bonds between mothers and daughters
Q love free of social security etc.
Spivak says that her problem is that the
entire questioning is going on in a privileged atmosphere. Drabble considers
the story of so privileged a woman the most worth telling, a woman whose poems
are read on the BBC. Drabble touches on the issue of race and class but only
casually.
Spivak says that Drabble is examining the
conditions of production and determination of micro structural heterosexual
attitudes within her chosen enclosure. This enclosure is important. It is from
there that rules come. First World feminists
are always doing it. If they need a morality they will create one, a new virtue.
They will invent morality that condones them though by doing so they condemn
all that they have been.
Another important thing emerges in the novel. The
narrator Jane (Drabble) decides to reconstitute life into a fictional form.
Drabble hints at the limitations of self interpretation within the fictional
form. She faces the need of narrative
unity. This has not allowed her to report the whole truth. She then changes
from third person to first.
Ö This
move is absurdity twice complicated
Ö The discourse reflecting on the limitations
of fiction-making fabricates another fiction.
Ö The narrator who is using metaphor is a
metaphor as well.
Spivak chooses a simpler method. She
acknowledges the global dismissal of any narrative speculation about the nature
of truth.
She dismisses the above dismissal also because
it suggests unwittingly that there is somewhere a way of speaking about truth
in ‘truthful’ language or that a speaker can somewhere get rid of the
structural unconscious and can speak without role playing.
The change from third person to first
person is explained thus by Spivak—
When one
takes a rational and aesthetic distance from oneself, one can come under the
conveniently classifying macrostructures.
By
contrast when one involves oneself in micro-structural practice one falls into
the deep waters of a first person who recognizes the limits of understanding
and change.
The risk of first person narrative is too much for
Jane. She wants to plot her narrative in terms of a category which is
paradoxical—‘pure corrupted love’. To describe one or two more sordid
conditions of pure corrupted love she returns to the detached and macro
structural third person narrative.
Conclusion
Drabble fills the void of the female consciousness
with meticulous and helpful articulation. But she does not give any serious
presentation of the problems of race and class, and of the marginality of sex.
Drabble presents a micro structural dystopia (opposite of Utopia). It
is a sexual situation in extremes. This seems more and more a part of women’s
fiction. Even within those limitations, feminists’ motto cannot be Jane’s ‘I
prefer to suffer, I think’. The motto must be to return to the third person
with its grounds mined under, the lesson of the scene of writing of The
Waterfall.
Section IV
Spivak says that essentialism is a trap.
The feminist academia that creates the discipline of women’s studies and the
students who follow feminism must remember that essentialism is a trap. All the
world’s women do not relate to the privileging of essence in the same way.
Spivak cites an incident that took place in
Seoul , South Korea
In a
factory owned by Control Data, 237 female workers struck work demanding better
wages. Control Data is a Minnesota-based multinational corporation. Six union leaders were dismissed and
imprisoned. The women took two visiting US Vice presidents as hostages
demanding the release of the arrested women. The Korean govt. was reluctant.
Control Data was willing. The Korean male workers at the factory beat up the
female workers and ended the dispute. Many women were injured and two suffered
miscarriages.
Spivak gives the
narrative’s overdeterminations (salient
points)
Q In earlier stages of industrial capitalism,
the colonies provided the raw materials so that the colonizing countries could
develop their manufacturing industrial base. Indigenous (native, local) production was crippled or destroyed. To minimize
circulation time, industrial capitalism needed to establish due process, and
such civilizing instruments as railways, postal services, and a system of
education.
Q The labour movements in the First World and the mechanisms of the welfare state made
manufacturing itself be carried out on the soil of the Third
World , where labour can make fewer demands, and the governments
are mortgaged.
Q In telecommunications industry where old
machinery becomes obsolete at a more rapid pace than it takes to absorb its
value in the commodity, this is particularly practical.
The workers in the Seoul
Socialized Capital—a critique
It has dynamism and civilizing power.
It civilizes through greater production of
surplus-value though technological advancement
It trains the consumer who will need what is produced
and thus help realize surplus-value as profit
It receives tax breaks associated with supporting
humanist ideology through ‘corporate philanthropy’.
However, socialized capital kills by remote control.
The American managers watched South Korean men decimating the women. The
managers denied charges. However active in the production of civilization as a
by-product socialized capital has not moved far from the presuppositions of a
slave mode of production.
In Roman theory,
the agricultural slave was instrumentum vocale. One grade above instrumentum
semi-vocale (livestock) and two grades above instrumentum mutum (the
agricultural implements)
PLATO
Control Data’s radio commercials speak of how its
computers open the door to knowledge, at home or in the workplace, for men and
women alike. PLATO is the acronym of Control Data’s computer system. The
historical symbolical value of the acronym shares in the effacement of
class-history that is the project of ‘civilization’ as such—“the slave mode of
production which underlay Athenian civilization necessarily found its most
pristine ideological expression in the privileged social stratum of the city,
whose intellectual heights its surplus labour in the silent depths below the
polis made possible”.
Derrida and the sign of woman—suppression of the
clitoris
Spivak notes that when Derrida writes under the sign
of woman his work becomes solipsistic and marginal. [ sol·ip·sism = (philosophy) the
theory that only the self exists or can be known]
His discovery of the figure of woman is in terms of a
critique of propriation. [The
act of taking something which belongs to somebody else, especially without
permission]
Propriation—proper-ing (as in the proper
name)—patronymic—property.
[Patronymic= a name formed from the name of your father or a male
ancestor, especially by adding something to the beginning or end of their name]
BY differentiating himself form the phallocentric
tradition under the aegis of [with
the protection or support of a particular organization or person] a woman who is the ‘sign’ of the
indeterminate, of that which has im-propriety as its property, Derrida can not
think that the sign ‘woman’ is indeterminate by virtue of its access to the
tyranny of the text of the proper. It is the tyranny of the ‘proper (in the
sense of that which produces both property and the proper name of the
patronymic—that Spivak has called the suppression of the clitoris and that
which the news item about Control Data illustrates.
Control Data is praised by bourgeois women as an
enlightened corporation that offer social-service leaves. One of the high paid
women employee writes thus:- “ I commend Control Data for their commitment to
employing and promoting women”. Bourgeois feminism because of a blindness to
multinational theatre, dissimulated [to hide your real feelings or intentions, often by pretending to have
different ones] by ‘clean’ national practice and fostered by the
dominant ideology, can participate in the tyranny of the proper and see in
Control Data and see an extender of the Platonic mandate for women in general.
Feminism lives in the master-text as well as in the
pores [one of the very small
holes in your skin that sweat can pass through; one of the similar small holes
in the surface of a plant or a rock] .
Spivak concludes—“I think less easily of ‘changing the
world’ than in the past. I teach a small number of the holders of the can(n)on,
male or female, feminist or masculist, how to read their own texts, as best as
I can”.
NOTES
1cat \'kat\ n, often attrib, [ME, fr. OE catt, prob. fr.
LL cattus, catta cat] (bef. 12c)
1 a : a carnivorous mammal (Felis catus) long domesticated as a pet and for catching rats and mice b : any of a family (Felidae) of carnivorous usu. solitary and nocturnal mammals (as the domestic cat, lion, tiger, leopard, jaguar, cougar, wildcat, lynx, and cheetah)
2 : a malicious woman
3 : a strong tackle used to hoist an anchor to the cathead of a ship
4 a : catboat b : catamaran
5 : cat-o'-nine-tails
6 : catfish
7 a : a player or devotee of jazz b : guy
1 a : a carnivorous mammal (Felis catus) long domesticated as a pet and for catching rats and mice b : any of a family (Felidae) of carnivorous usu. solitary and nocturnal mammals (as the domestic cat, lion, tiger, leopard, jaguar, cougar, wildcat, lynx, and cheetah)
2 : a malicious woman
3 : a strong tackle used to hoist an anchor to the cathead of a ship
4 a : catboat b : catamaran
5 : cat-o'-nine-tails
6 : catfish
7 a : a player or devotee of jazz b : guy
2cat vb, cat·ted cat·ting
vi(1681) : to search for a sexual mate — often used with around
vt: to bring (an anchor) up to the cathead
vi(1681) : to search for a sexual mate — often used with around
vt: to bring (an anchor) up to the cathead
3cat abbr
1 catalog
2 catalyst
1 catalog
2 catalyst
cat·boat \'kat-"bōt\ n
(1860) : a sailboat having a cat rig and usu. a centerboard and being of
light draft and broad beam
cat–o'–nine–tails
\"ka-tə-'nīn-"tālz\ n, pl cat–o'–nine–tails [fr. the
resemblance of its scars to the scratches of a cat] (1665) : a whip made
of usu. nine knotted lines or cords fastened to a handle
1guy \'gī\ n [prob. fr. D gei brail] (1623) : a
rope, chain, rod, or wire attached to something as a brace or guide called
also guyline
2guy vt (1712) : to steady or
reinforce with a guy
3guy n [Guy Fawkes] (1806)
1 often cap: a grotesque effigy of Guy Fawkes traditionally displayed and burned in England on Guy Fawkes Day
2 chiefly Brit: a person of grotesque appearance
3 a : man fellow b : person — used in pl. to refer to the members of a group regardless of sex ‹saw her and the rest of the ~s›
4 : individual creature ‹the other dogs pale in companion to this little ~›
1 often cap: a grotesque effigy of Guy Fawkes traditionally displayed and burned in England on Guy Fawkes Day
2 chiefly Brit: a person of grotesque appearance
3 a : man fellow b : person — used in pl. to refer to the members of a group regardless of sex ‹saw her and the rest of the ~s›
4 : individual creature ‹the other dogs pale in companion to this little ~›
1mean \'mēn\ vb, meant \'ment\ mean·ing \'mē-niŋ\
[ME menen, fr. OE mǣnan; akin to OHG meinen to have in mind, OCS měniti to
mention]
vt(bef. 12c)
1 a : to have in the mind as a purpose : intend ‹she ~s to win› — sometimes used interjectionally with I, chiefly in informal speech for emphasis ‹he throws, I ~, hard› or to introduce a phrase restating the point of a preceding phrase ‹we try to answer what we can, but I ~ we're not God —Bobbie Ann Mason› b : to design for or destine to a specified purpose or future ‹I was meant to teach›
2 : to serve or intend to convey, show, or indicate : signify ‹a red sky ~s rain›
3 : to have importance to the degree of ‹health ~s everything›
4 : to direct to a particular individual
vi: to have an intended purpose ‹he ~s well›
— mean·er \'mē-nər\ n
— mean business : to be in earnest
vt(bef. 12c)
1 a : to have in the mind as a purpose : intend ‹she ~s to win› — sometimes used interjectionally with I, chiefly in informal speech for emphasis ‹he throws, I ~, hard› or to introduce a phrase restating the point of a preceding phrase ‹we try to answer what we can, but I ~ we're not God —Bobbie Ann Mason› b : to design for or destine to a specified purpose or future ‹I was meant to teach›
2 : to serve or intend to convey, show, or indicate : signify ‹a red sky ~s rain›
3 : to have importance to the degree of ‹health ~s everything›
4 : to direct to a particular individual
vi: to have an intended purpose ‹he ~s well›
— mean·er \'mē-nər\ n
— mean business : to be in earnest
2mean \'mēn\ adj [ME mene, fr. imene common, shared,
fr. OE gemǣne; akin to OHG gimeini common, L
communis common, munus service, gift, Skt mayate he
exchanges] (14c)
1 : lacking distinction or eminence : humble
2 : lacking in mental discrimination : dull
3 a : of poor shabby inferior quality or status ‹~ city streets› b : worthy of little regard : contemptible — often used in negative constructions as a term of praise ‹no ~ feat›
4 : lacking dignity or honor : base
5 a : penurious stingy b : characterized by petty selfishness or malice c : causing trouble or bother : vexatious d : excellent effective ‹plays a ~ trumpet› ‹a lean, ~ athlete›
6 : ashamed 1b
— mean·ness \'mēn-nəs\ n
1 : lacking distinction or eminence : humble
2 : lacking in mental discrimination : dull
3 a : of poor shabby inferior quality or status ‹~ city streets› b : worthy of little regard : contemptible — often used in negative constructions as a term of praise ‹no ~ feat›
4 : lacking dignity or honor : base
5 a : penurious stingy b : characterized by petty selfishness or malice c : causing trouble or bother : vexatious d : excellent effective ‹plays a ~ trumpet› ‹a lean, ~ athlete›
6 : ashamed 1b
— mean·ness \'mēn-nəs\ n
syn mean ignoble abject
sordid mean being below the normal
standards of human decency and dignity. mean
suggests having such repellent characteristics as small-mindedness, ill temper,
or cupidity ‹mean and petty satire›. ignoble
suggests a loss or lack of some essential high quality of mind or spirit ‹an ignoble
scramble after material possessions›. abject
may imply degradation, debasement, or servility ‹abject poverty›. sordid is stronger than all of these in
stressing physical or spiritual degradation and abjectness ‹a sordid
story of murder and revenge›.
3mean adj [ME mene, fr. AF mene,
meiene, fr. L medianus — more at median]
(14c)
1 : occupying a middle position : intermediate in space, order, time, kind, or degree
2 : occupying a position about midway between extremes ; esp: being the mean of a set of values : average ‹the ~ temperature›
3 : serving as a means : intermediary average
1 : occupying a middle position : intermediate in space, order, time, kind, or degree
2 : occupying a position about midway between extremes ; esp: being the mean of a set of values : average ‹the ~ temperature›
3 : serving as a means : intermediary average
4mean n (14c)
1 a (1): something intervening or intermediate (2): a middle point between extremes b : a value that lies within a range of values and is computed according to a prescribed law: as (1): arithmetic mean (2): expected value c : either of the middle two terms of a proportion
2 pl but sing or pl in constr: something useful or helpful to a desired end
3 pl: resources available for disposal ; esp: material resources affording a secure life
— by all means : most assuredly : certainly
— by means of : through the use of
— by no means : in no way : not at all
A SIMPLIFIED VERSION OF THIS MATERIAL IS AVAILABLE IN THE POST. PLEASE REFER TO IT. S. SREEKUMAR
1 a (1): something intervening or intermediate (2): a middle point between extremes b : a value that lies within a range of values and is computed according to a prescribed law: as (1): arithmetic mean (2): expected value c : either of the middle two terms of a proportion
2 pl but sing or pl in constr: something useful or helpful to a desired end
3 pl: resources available for disposal ; esp: material resources affording a secure life
— by all means : most assuredly : certainly
— by means of : through the use of
— by no means : in no way : not at all
A SIMPLIFIED VERSION OF THIS MATERIAL IS AVAILABLE IN THE POST. PLEASE REFER TO IT. S. SREEKUMAR
Thank you. This is really going to help me for my exam. God bless
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