Word: boer
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...thrombosis; in Santa Barbara, Calif. At various times a cowboy, stagecoach-guard and deputy sheriff, Burnham fought in campaigns against the Apaches, in South Africa's bloody Matabele Wars (which he virtually ended singlehanded by killing the Matabele god M'Limo in a cave), and in the Boer War. Back home in California, he struck it rich in the oil business, spent the rest of his life in prosperous comfort...
...graduated" v. "graduated" [TIME, May 19]: I chuckled over TIME'S mild rebuke to Reader De Boer, but fear that some readers may have missed the delicate subtlety of "that extended little finger." People who say "was graduated" are like those who pronounce the "i" in parliament and the "t" in often. As a matter of fact the dictionaries allow either the transitive or the intransitive use of the verb, but the stately OXFORD says of "was graduated": "now rare except...
...BOER...
...Reader De Boer regain his balance by hauling in that extended little finger...
Free State, most Anglophobic of all South Africa's provinces. Along their route sturdy Boer farmers forsook ploughs and politics to shout greetings. Schoolchildren lined the wayside stations and at one siding a dark, native choir sang the Hallelujah Chorus-"with superb effect," reported the Times of London...