Word: bitted
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Lexicographer Bergen Evans of Northwestern University believes that euphemisms persist because "lying is an indispensable part of making life tolerable." It is virtuous, but a bit beside the point, to contend that lies are deplorable. So they are; but they cannot be moralized or legislated away, any more than euphemisms can be. Verbal miasma, when it deliberately obscures truth, is an offense to reason. But the inclination to speak of certain things in uncertain terms is a reminder that there will always be areas of life that humanity considers too private, or too close to feelings of guilt, to speak...
That image has grown a bit tarnished of late. Before the Six-Day War, Israel was seen as a valiant underdog surrounded by hostile giants. Its victory in that war was widely cheered, but as the border conflict ground on, the feeling began to develop that Israel was being a little too tough in its retaliation, a little too intransigent in its refusal to yield any of the occupied territories without an overall settlement. To avenge an El Al passenger's murder by terrorists in Athens, Israel destroyed 13 aircraft in Beirut. It has annexed all of Jerusalem...
Linotyping in the '20's was under the capable mismanagement of Dick Dyer, and credit goes to him for the worst "pruf hacks" (proofreading errors) of the decade. On one occasion Dyer, offended by the euphonics of Agamemnon's name, proceeded to alter it to "Agoddammit." Likewise, a bit of theological profundity on the merits of the Christian faith lost its effort in no small degree when the head above it appeared proclaiming "Christianity: A Positive Farce...
...hypercredulous simps. His first two tactics for system-beating, his Vague Generalities and Artful Equivocations, seem to presume the latter, and are only going to convince CRIMSON-reading graders (and there a few and we tell our friends) that the time has come to tighten the screws just a bit more...
...EITHER case, though, you'd best expect a good bit of violence. Violence, along with a cataclysmic sense of emergency, has become pretty fashionable here of late. It makes life at Harvard alternately exciting, exhausting, and intolerable. Our Harvard-in its prose and its "politics" -practices a kind of blunt, immediate violence. Over dinner we argue about movies and rock, late at night we meet over beer or dope to argue about each other, and, once our ideas have reached a state of partial articulation, we confront and demand and we curse. O-K, so maybe we're sometimes wrong...