Word: bastardizes
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...Bastard Twins. Asked about the use of host as a transitive verb, as when Johnny Carson "hosts" the Tonight Show, Princeton Historian Eric F. Goldman wrote: "This is TVese and public-relationese, hardly an improvement over the English language." On the use of like as a conjunction, like in the Winston cigarette syndrome, Writer John Kiernan commented: "Such things as these persuade me that the death penalty should be retained." Isaac Asimov, the lucid science writer, also denounced finalize as "nothing more than bureaucratic illiteracy-the last resort of the communicatively untalented...
...called it "a Madison Avenue locution which should be avoided by every civilized person." Author Basil Davenport grudgingly approved advise in the sense of notify. Even so, he ruled, it is permissible only "in business English and Army English, if there is any excuse for the existence of these bastard twins...
...Melvin Powers, the hulking drifter whom he had successfully defended along with Candy Mossier, 49, in the celebrated 1964 murder of Multimillionaire Jacques Mossier. Powers, 27, was incensed over Foreman's suit to obtain legal fees involving several hundred thousand dollars from Powers' Aunt Candy. "Look you bastard, I'm mean," raged Powers, gesturing threateningly. "I'm tough too," replied the husky lawyer. Then, as onlookers gaped, Powers went on: "Don't forget. I've already killed one old man and it wouldn't bother me to kill another one." "Oh, yeah?" asked...
...like the other plays in Shakespeare's Renaissance style (as opposed to his Mannerist and Baroque styles), exhibited a good deal of symmetry. The central tragicomic Claudio-Hero plot is balanced by the high comedy of Beatrice and Benedick and the low comedy of Dogberry and Verges. The evil bastard Don John is a foil to his genial legitimate brother Don Pedro; and these young brothers contrast with the older-generation brothers Antonio and Leonato. Don John's two male attendants (Borachio and Conrade) balance. Hero's female ones (Margaret and Ursula). Claudio and Hero, on one hand, and Beatrice...
...Aussie slang for an Englishman) on at least one occasion. "I had an umbrella with me," he said. "It had been raining quite heavily, and they all looked rather quizzically at this strange English thing, and as I walked out there were marvelous shouts of 'Oh, Pommy bastard...