Word: argot
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...surface, the two sides suddenly seemed to be edging toward genuine compromise. Both talked of dramatic cuts in nuclear arsenals and a limit of 6,000 on the number of nuclear "charges," the new arms-control argot for warheads and bombs. Both offered freezes and reductions on missiles in Europe. But on closer scrutiny, the underlying differences remained so significant that it was still hard to tell if both sides were motivated by a sincere desire for an arms-control agreement as well as by their continuing quest for propaganda advantage. The two nations still disagree, for example...
...arms negotiator, sat down at the banquet-size table in the Botanic Building, the drab headquarters of the U.S. arms-control delegation across from Geneva's tidy botanical gardens, and began reading slowly from a lengthy document. For half an hour the Soviet negotiator droned on, speaking in the argot of nuclear weaponry. His monologue was technical and arcane, yet it was immensely important. At the least, it promised to deliver arms control from the realm of rhetoric to the real business of negotiated give-and-take over numbers and weapons. After months of stonewalling at the talks that began...
...Soviets also implicitly offered concessions involving the power of rockets used to launch warheads. In the argot of nuclear weapons, this power is known as throw weight, the ability to hurl a payload. The Soviets now have about 5.7 million kilograms of ballistic-missile throw weight, while the U.S. has a mere 2 million kilograms. The Soviet proposal offered last week would reduce the Kremlin's throw weight to no more than 3 million kilograms, according to an analysis for TIME by Ted Warner, an arms-control expert at the Rand Corp...
Traditionally, the Soviets have employed a kind of Orwellian Newspeak in their pronouncements. Western leaders were invariably "certain imperialist circles," their followers "faithful lackeys." But the current Kremlin spokesmen slip easily into Western argot and affect a more relaxed, laid-back style. Ebullient Eduard Shevardnadze, the new Foreign Minister who replaced Andrei Gromyko (known as Grim Grom by Western newsmen), disarmed U.S. officials during a technical discussion of arms control at Helsinki last month with a rare display of Soviet humility. "Well, of course, I'm not a real expert!" he reportedly exclaimed and then turned to informally solicit...
...nation's East shore, down the Mississippi River, mornings in November are punctuated with the laughter-like calls of migratory fowl and the sharp reports of shotguns. While some people loathe the practice, hunters romance it, just as Hemingway did in that pretty passage. After all, even the argot of the sport is poetry: when a bird sets its wings to come in to feed, it is "whiffing," defined by Webster as moving "with or as if with a puff of air." The hunters themselves have a more evocative term-they call it "maple leafing," a lovely image...