Word: abracadabra
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...Abracadabra. In Rio de Janeiro, Dona Rosa met an old friend she had not seen in five years, gave her the ritual hug (abraco&) of Rio residents, broke three of her ribs...
...problem of controlling wartime inflation required courage and brains, but there was a shortage of both in the bill. No amount of political abracadabra could obscure the simple truth: that if costs and prices are permitted to zoom, inflation will result...
...think, President Seymour who first used that rather mealy-mouthed phrase, "the indefinable something that is Yale." The meaning of these six unctuous words is ephemeral and open to whatever interpretation the listener may be disposed to make; usually, for the outlander, they mean about as much as abracadabra. But to us Elis, who glibly parrot this phrase, it leaves an impression of abstract vapidity that often passes for profundity. A catchword that rolls neatly off the tongue, it is used with equanimity both for accepting praise and for repelling criticism. What, then, does it mean...
...Take It With You. The last act wobbles all over the place. This is not miscalculation on Odets' part. It springs from a pretentious-side of him that wants to make every common dentist's office widen out into the universe. Sometimes he mistakes abracadabra for revelation...
...study and an unintended indictment of the forms & symbols that circumscribe its people, The Dybbuk is important. As cinema it is tedious, technically crude, lacking in coherence. Here and there are pictorial groupings, interesting enough in themselves, but poorly related in the general clutter of hyper-religious abracadabra and the familiar hocus-pocus of third-rate melodrama. The mere mention of Kabala brings on thunder-and-lightning overtones; a departing soul is the signal for banging casements, flickering candles, fluttering curtains. Valiantly pushing its way through is a slender story of a boy (L. Libgold) and a girl (Lili Liliana...