Word: bane
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This new rule, adopted for the 1954-55 season, has made the pro game a better, faster, more exciting sport. In other years, "freezing" the ball in the late stages was the bane of the game. A team that found itself a few points ahead near the end would simply pass the ball around from player to player, without trying for a basket (which would mean losing possession if the shot failed and the opponents grabbed the rebound). The trailing team would then deliberately foul to get possession (risking a one-point foul shot for a a possible two-point...
...longtime bane of French Catholic churches, known as industrie de St.-Sulpice, is on the way out. The industry: mass production of plaster images of the saints, which look like refugees from a candy factory. For decades, they have been sold in great quantities by the supply stores that ring the church of St.-Sulpice in Paris' Latin Quarter. The figures invariably have red and blue garments with gold and silver borders, and piously uptilted blue or brown eyes. As decoration they may be innocuous, but as objects of veneration they are absurd...
...plethora of books is the bane of American history scholars who use a large library, while a paucity of them troubles the historian in the hinterlands. Either way, the serious scholar needs a general bibliography when he selects books for his research, and until now historians have necessarily relied upon the Channing, Hart, and Turner Guide to the Study and Reading of American History, published in 1912. But a bibliography four decades out-of-date and twenty years out of print has limited usefulness, and it remained for the authors of the Harvard Guide to American History to recommend...
...weightthrow, a track & field event normally reserved for bulge-bellied giants-in fact, the weight men are commonly called "whales." At Tufts College, Backus, still slim but taking on weight, became a better-than-average weight-thrower, but he was always in the shadow of his roommate Tom Bane, who in 1951 set a world record with a throw...
Just a year ago Backus, now a strapping giant (6 ft. 5 in., 218 Ibs.), and still doggedly heaving the 35-lb. weight, managed to throw it a new record distance, a quarter of an inch, farther than Bane's mark. Again Backus suffered a disappointing washout. On inspection, it was found that the 35-lb. weight was a few ounces underweight...