a neal defines rant post

Es­ti­mated reading time is 1 minute.

A SUG­GES­TION MADE TO ME by one of the few early readers of this blog (a friend, natch) that I ex­plain ex­actly what a “rant” is. That was brought on by my having two cat­e­gories on this web­site with that word in their title: “Neal’s Rants (Re­ally Po­lit­ical” and “Neal’s Rants (Not-So-Political).” In nei­ther do I rant in the manner to which we Amer­i­cans have be­come due to the ubiq­uity to rightwingnut talk­show radio. But that’s an­other story!

 Rant is usu­ally used as an in­tran­si­tive verb. Ac­cording to Wikipedia, “an in­tran­si­tive verb is a verb that has no di­rect ob­ject. . . . Ex­am­ples of in­tran­si­tive verbs in­clude to age, to die, and to sleep.”

Merriam-Webster de­fines rant as “to talk in a noisy, ex­cited, or declam­a­tory manner,” and, sec­on­darily, “to scold vehemently.”

Rant may also be used as a tran­si­tive verb (a verb that has an ob­ject), in which case it would mean “to utter in a bom­bastic declam­a­tory fashion.”

Ex­ample: “Yes­terday, Rush Lim­baugh ranted at the fem­i­nazis for more than an hour on his show.”

One who rants is a ranter.

Ex­ample: “Rush Lim­baugh is both loved and re­viled as a ranter who knows no equal in the rightwingnut radio talk­show circuit.

Ranters often speaks rant­i­ngly.

Ex­ample: “Yes­terday, Rush Lim­baugh verbally—some might say rantingly—assaulted the fem­i­nazis for more than an hour on his show.”

There: Neal de­fines rant. You will no­tice that I rarely rant here in “Neal’s Rants.” I dinna care; I just like the title!

There, now I have a “Neal de­fines rant” post . . .


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