Word: aproned
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...President and Nancy Reagan met the families in a sparsely furnished classroom. Reagan picked up Mike Smith's daughter Erin, 8, who was holding a brown teddy bear that wore a pink apron. After embracing most of the relatives, one by one, he said, "We'll all go out together in a few minutes. I wish there was something I could say to make it easier, but there just aren't any words." Yet when the music stopped and he stepped onto the outdoor ; rostrum, Reagan once again found the right words, and he delivered them eloquently...
...puts her head down on her arms and sobs luxuriantly. The truckers are gone, and I touch her arm and tell her to look at what they have left. There is a $20 bill beside each plate. She looks up, nods, wipes her eyes on her apron, pockets the tips and goes to get a broom...
...some trauma glimpsed or experienced during the author's childhood in Montreal. In Orphans' Progress, for example, two wretched little girls are locked up in a French-Canadian convent school. Eight-year-old Mildred and twelve-year-old Cathie are bathed every two weeks, the one wearing a rubber apron and the other a muslin shift so they cannot see their own bodies. The state of Mildred's thumb tells it all: "Sucked white, (it) was taped to the palm of her hand...
...Meredith scatters ashes across the stage, the built-for-speed Gifford does end runs with a vacuum cleaner. Meredith calls it typecasting: "There's a lot more of Felix in Gifford than there is in me. He hurts easily." Anyway, says Meredith, "he's so cute in his little apron...
Journalese is rich in mystic nouns: gentrification, quichification, greenmail, dealignment, watershed elections and apron strings (the political coattails of a female candidate). But students of the language agree that adjectives do most of the work, smuggling in actual information under the guise of normal journalism. Thus the use of soft-spoken (mousy), loyal (dumb), high-minded (inept), hardworking (plodding), self-made (crooked) and pragmatic (totally immoral). A person who is dangerous as well as immoral can be described as a fierce competitor or gut fighter, and a meddler who cannot leave his subordinates alone is a hands-on executive. When...