We Want to Reune

To maintain a respectable consistency, the editors of a magazine such as this one must choose a dictionary in which to believe and then do what it tells them to do. Harvard Magazine's dictionary of choice is the Random House Unabridged, 1993 edition.

To the editors' dismay, Random House does not acknowledge the existence of "reune," meaning to hold a reunion. These lexicographers want us to "reunite." That is too stodgy, even political, for what goes on during Commencement week. The editors are put out with their dictionary.

The 1961 Webster's Third New International Dictionary accepts reune without demur and offers an example of its usage--"two dinners will be held for each class...reuning this summer"--from the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine. (The editor in chief of the dictionary, the late Philip Babcock Gove, was a Dartmouth man, with a 1925 Harvard A.M.)

The current edition of the Oxford English Dictionary also smiles on reune, although calling it a U.S. colloquialism. It cites five examples of the word's usage, the earliest from a 1901 Princeton Alumni Weekly: "As the secretary of a class which has 'reuned' frequently...I wish to direct your attention to a breach of etiquette."

The 1992 American Heritage Dictionary is as stuffy as Random House. It doesn't mention reune. As for "enthuse," a verb it does admit, the usage panel notes, "The verb enthuse is not well accepted....such words often meet with disapproval on their first appearance and only gradually become accepted over time. But other back-formations such as diagnose...and donate...are considered unimpeachable English words." The authorities go on to suggest that enthuse's real problem is that it's tacky. Reune is not. And it rhymes with June, which makes it all the more suitable for use by Harvardians.

With the season of timeless advice now behind us, savor these lines from the commencement address to the Wellesley College class of 1902 by Le Baron Russell Briggs, A.B. 1875, LL.D. '00:

"[A] man knows that hard and able work will bring a man's reward; whereas a woman knows that, partly because people are prejudiced but chiefly because men and women are eternally unlike, she cannot hope for those positions which demand continuity of physical strength, grasp (not merely insight) in meeting large problems day after day, and unprotected association with all kinds of people. Women who can fill such positions are so few that we may pass them by. As the power, not on the throne but behind it, as the leaven that lifts men to higher things, as the standard of unselfishness, devotion, purity, and faith, women may at some time reform and transform the business world; but they will not often be good heads of business houses; they may be good physicians, but they will rarely be good lawyers; they may be, and often are, mentally and morally head and shoulders above the preachers to whom they listen with steady loyalty, but they will better be ministers' wives than ministers."

Briggs was dean of Harvard College at the time of these remarks. The next year he was made president of Radcliffe.

Each year this magazine prints a list of the oldest living alumni of Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges (see "Young at Harvard"). To have ascended to the very top of the roll is surely an achievement worth recording--perhaps in stone, and in capital letters.

Jon von Briesen '71, of Forked River, New Jersey, has sent Primus a photograph of a gravestone in Dover, New Hampshire. It tells of the life of Dr. Ezra Green, reading in part as follows:
"Born in Malden, Mass., June 17 (O.S.) 1746, the 4th in descent from James Green, Freeman of the Colony and a settler in that town in 1647.
"Graduated at Harvard College, 1765; Surgeon in the army of the Revolution 1775 and 1776: and in the ship of War Ranger, Capt. John Paul Jones, 1777 and 1778.
"Member of the Convention for the adoption of the Constitution of the U.S.
"Deacon of the Cong. Church in Dover from 1790.
"Humble and devout, sincere and upright, benevolent, faithful and consistant, his Life was an illustration of the Christian Patriot.
"With Intellect unclouded, and a Faith which had sustained him through long infirmity, he died July 25, 1847, at the age of 101 years, at the end of the 2nd century from the first settlement of the family in this country: and the oldest Graduate of HARVARD COLLEGE."

~Primus IV

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