List No. 081
COCKTAIL!
F. Scott Fitzgerald
January 1926
F. Scott Fitzgerald was one of the most famous novelists of the 20th century, having been responsible for writing such classics as The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night. He was also notorious for his excessive drinking during the Roaring Twenties and spent much of the decade topped up with alcohol, ultimately to the detriment of his health. It seems quite apt, then, to find, in a letter written to Blanche W. Knopf, a list in which he conjugates the verb “to cocktail”.
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Present |
I cocktail |
We cocktail |
|
Thou cocktail |
You cocktail |
|
|
It cocktails |
They cocktail |
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|
Imperfect |
I was cocktailing |
|
|
Perfect (pastdefinate) |
I cocktailed |
|
|
Past perfect Conditional |
I have cocktailed |
|
|
Pluperfect |
I had cocktailed |
|
|
Subjunctive |
I would have cocktailed |
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|
Voluntary Sub. |
I should have cocktailed |
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Preterite |
I did cocktail |
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|
Imperative |
Cocktail! |
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|
Interrogative |
Cocktailest thou? (Dos’t Cocktail?) |
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|
Subjunctive Conditional |
I would have had to have cocktailed |
|
|
Conditional Subjunctive |
I might have had to have cocktailed |
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|
Participle |
Cocktailing |
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