Word: byword
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Even Buckley's faith in--and worship of--the neighborhood school (the importance of which, he says, "cannot be overemphasized") seems wholly defensible, if overplayed. The neighborhood school, really a simple and sound concept, has evolved into a byword for racism because it happens that honest-to-goodness racists are its principal supporters. Here is another example of a dilemma Buckley keeps falling into: his proposals, whether by intention or not, coincide beautifully with the interests of middle-class whites of the Parents and Taxpayers ilk; the Conservative ticket, thus, gets a lot of its support (and votes) from racists...
...order to find "the most wonderful smell in the world," and insisted on having the bows on packages retied again and again until they reached the exact, proper tilt. Since very few mortals were capable of her degree of dedication, the turnover among Arden employees was a byword in Manhattan career circles; but her exacting policies made great sense to her customers. Inside her salons (now numbering 50 in 33 countries), she similarly tried to perfect the Total Woman-physically, mentally and emotionally-by having her rubbed, scrubbed, pounded, patted, stretched, scented, oiled, tinted, and occasionally encased from...
...their friends' rooms from the ground below. One over-studious freshman, known to posterity only as Rinehart, had no callers. Determined to revamp his Image, he took to standing below his window shouting his own name. Rinehart's deception was seen uncovered, and his name became a byword at Harvard rebellions. At one time its very mention in the Yard was a staple ingredient for mixing instant riot...
...ingenious hunchback, Alexander Pope, whose ferociously witty verses proclaimed that Lady Mary was greedy, stingy, adulterous, Lesbian, syphilitic-and on top of that she wore a dirty smock. His attacks were sickeningly effective. In her 40s Lady Mary faced a painful prospect: her name was muck, her marriage a byword, her looks a fading memory. In moving lines she said farewell to the love she never found...
...sketch classes in Paris. Synthesizing such high-key colorism with cubism, he practiced and preached an intuitive, joyous abstract expressionism. His doctrine of "push and pull," by which he tried to reintroduce the tensions once created by depth perspective into the picture plane, flattened by modern artists, became the byword of abstract expressionism, and he himself became the movement's prime mentor. In his Red Trickle of 1939, he pioneered the drip technique that his friend Jackson Pollock was to make his most famous format...