Word: bernsteins
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...points out that "there have been more societies destroyed by the undisclosed corruption or incompetence of leaders than by any demoralization that comes from disclosure." Says a relaxed George Reedy, dean of Marquette University's journalism school: "For a while every reporter was out to be Woodward and Bernstein. Ten years ago, it was Tom Wolfe and participatory journalism. Fifteen or 20 years ago, it was James Reston. The fads come...
Gitl makes a valiant effort, but cannot conform to her husband's new ways. With his American values, Jake claims that he is twice as good a man as their boarder, Bernstein, because he makes twice as much money. Perhaps the sweatshop boss best summarizes the differences between the Old and New Worlds when he observes that in America, "the peddler becomes the boss and the Yeshiva student sits at the sewing machine." At one point, as her neighbor Mrs. Kavarsky is squeezing a groaning Gitl into a corset for that sleek American look, she tells her, "You wanna...
...evening Theodore Bernstein, consulting editor of the New York Times and for years its linguistic policeman, was trying to think of the term for a sentence or word that reads the same both backward and forward, as in "Madam, I'm Adam." It came to him the next morning (palindrome), and with it the inspiration for this book-a reverse dictionary that alphabetically lists an array of meanings and then retrieves the word that has momentarily disappeared into the outer fog banks of the brain...
...reader vaguely recalls a lovely term for a mirage-something Italianate. He checks Bernstein under "mirage, especially as observed in the Strait of Messina" and finds fata morgana. "Midget or dwarf leads to homunculus. "Ecstasy of a religious nature" brings forth theopathy. "Misstroke or misplay" discovers foozle...
Body Stealer. There is some padding in the 13,390 entries. Is anyone likely to misplace humid or fervent or dawdle? Bernstein includes some delightful, half-remembered curios-a body stealer, for example, is a resurrectionist. But where is mooncalf? Where is poshlust? Sometimes the clue words are elusive. If one goes hunting for callipygian, he cannot look under "buttocks, rounded" or some such, but must hit "shapely buttocks" or "beautiful buttocks." ("Buttocks that are fat" yields steatopygia-which is a different matter altogether.) Bernstein's backward dictionary is a kind of combination thesaurus and crossword-puzzle dictionary...