Word: ax
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...influence people with his movies. He enrolled in a Boy Scout photography program, where his success made him at 13 one of the youngest Eagle Scouts ever. ("If I hadn't been a Scout," Spielberg cheerfully admits today, "I'd probably have ended up as an ax murderer or a butcher in a Jewish deli.") One high school jock who used to taunt Steven was won over when the young director cast him in an 8-mm movie called Battle Squad. At Phoenix's Arcadia High School, Spielberg found fellow spirits in the theater-arts program...
Such words babble up in all corners of society, wherever anybody is ax-grinding, arm-twisting, backscratching, sweet-talking. Political blather leans sharply to words (peace, prosperity) whose moving powers outweigh exact meanings. Merchandising depends on adjectives (new, improved) that must be continually recharged with notions that entice people to buy. In casual conversation, emotional stuffing is lent to words by inflection and gesture: the innocent phrase, "Thanks a lot," is frequently a vehicle for heaping servings of irritation. Traffic in opinion-heavy language is universal simply because most people, as C.S. Lewis puts it, are "more anxious to express...
...their credit. Yale freshman Kendall Sharp arrived in New Haven this fall with absolutely no experience in organized athletic competition. Just before the winter season began, a friend persuaded the reluctant Sharp to tag along to basketball tryouts. While the friend--a former high school team captain--got the ax early. Sharp impressed Eli coach Maggic Muldoon enough with her natural athletic prowess to win a spot on the roster...
That does not seem likely for the moment. But like other government agencies, NSF has been struck by the budget ax; for fiscal 1982, the Antarctic program has been effectively cut by 10%, curtailing scientific activity and delaying needed repairs at McMurdo. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union continues to expand its operations on the ice, with a total of seven research bases strategically scattered over nearly all of the claimed pie slices...
...savings accounts, and strengthening the rules governing the minimum tax corporations must pay. In addition, the President will push for approximately $31 billion of further spending cuts, drawn up last December, in Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps and other programs that have already felt the blade of his budget ax...