Word: babbittism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1920-1929
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Babbitt...
...does one play the new game, "Babbitt...
...game of Beaver. One walked with a companion; one saw a bearded man; one shouted "Beaver," scoring a point for every beard. Game score, as in Fives, was 21. The vogue of Beaver passed two years ago, but recently, on Long Island, a similar pastime started-the game of Babbitt. One drives the highroad, keeping a sharp eye out for Babbitts.* When a Babbitt is sighted, one points a finger at him, shouting "Babbitt." Babbitts travel together, and frequently whole games can be scored from a single car. Score is kept as in tennis- fifteen, thirty, forty, game...
...Babbitt is any person who by his muddled features, raucous costume, attitude or gesture defines himself as inescapably belonging to that type of Native American popularized in the novel of Sinclair Lewis...
MANTRAP?Sinclair Lewis?Harcourt, Brace ($2). For the moment laying aside the loaded knouts with which he has scourged Main Street, Babbitt and the medical profession, Castigator Lewis now swings a cutting quirt upon upholders of "the most blatant of all American myths," namely, Roughing It Like a He-Man in the North Woods. The chief culprit is round, thick, heartily self-satisfied E. Wesson Woodbury, village fatboy grown up to hosiery sales-manager, who backslaps his tired little lawyer-friend Ralph Prescott into taking a canoe trip to Mantrap Landing, upper Canada, and then bully-rags...