Word: bandits
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...landlord decorated the studio's marble staircase with ripe garbage, cut off water and telephone service, and finally tried to budge Levi by painting insulting inscriptions on the studio walls. Samples: "Carlo Levi is a bandit and a rascal. . . . Since Carlo Levi refuses to make way for the worthy and the homeless, can't he have the decency to instruct his girl friends not to slam the door when they leave...
Aside from local distributors, this booming business is shared by nearly 200 manufacturers. Among the biggest are Rowe (cigarets), Du Grenier (cigarets and candy), Mills (unrelated to Bert E.) Novelty (Coca-Cola and familiar "one-arm-bandit gambling machines") and Automatic Canteen (snacks). The industry has lately attracted such companies as Bell Aircraft (coin changer) and General Electric (hotdog cooker...
Dadswell's roving is the current phase of an old restlessness. He was 16 when he broke in as a columnist ("Village Gossip by the Boy Reporter") on the old Chicago American. Two years later he scooped the U.S. press when he interviewed Bandit Pancho Villa in Mexico. Since then, on a dozen different papers, he has been in every newspaper slot from reporter to publisher-editor, with time out as photographer, newsreel cameraman, and front man for circuses...
Other Soviet-style billingsgate: "Foulest of words . . . ancient and hackneyed gossip ... phantasmagoria of phrases . . . delirium of an impudent person . mercenary from head to heels . . . this savage . . . bandit . . depraved souls . . . product of the Stock Exchange and black market . . . scum. . . . How can you influence him? Such persons are not even beaten, so as not to stain one's hands...
That was true. The good old Spanish word bandido, meaning bandit, is not quite the same thing. Mexicans have imported the word "gangster," unchanged, into their colloquial speech. The Spanish might do the same; but they are more conservative, linguistically, and anyway this hardly seemed a good time...