Word: clabber
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...realized that none of the existing dialect grammars or dictionaries actually contained forms that were relevant today; they were all based on the speech of old white farmers from the 1920s…how many students today know what a whiffletree or bonny-clabber are?” Vaux wrote in an e-mail...
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a whiffletree is a crossbar on a plough, while bonny-clabber is a type of sour milk...
...Keyes literary style, which is as smooth as clabber, is to hook connective tissue to a lavish collection of cliches. No doubt the hundreds that occur in her book have been worn even smoother by constant use. "Unseemly behavior," "ulterior motive," "the bond of affection," "spread like wildfire," "fraught with danger," "outraged dignity," "food for thought," "kicking over the traces," "nefarious scheme," "accepted with alacrity," "wild disorders," "the handwriting on the wall," "a figment of imagination," "travel-stained "garments," "the unvarnished truth," "failing fast," "a kind and devoted husband," "their fury knew no bounds," "by hook or crook"-they...
...dramatic actor, he chose Material Witness, by Henry (Time Limit) Denker, and the title role of an average householder who sweated out 50 dreary minutes in fear that gangland killers would learn of his presence at one of their crimes. The show was just another dipperful of clabber out of Kraft Theater's antique churn. Berle played the shallowly written role with egregious self-control. Conscious of his dignity as a TV elder statesman, he liked the part because it was, said he proudly, "something unbrash, unflippant and unaggressive-I wanted to get away from the Berle trademarks...
Nothing is too insignificant to escape their wrenlike curiosity. "You'd be surprised at the signs," says Mrs. Gill. "I noted them down. The ones we saw all over the United States were the Clabber Girl advertisement, Quaker State motor oil, Burma-Shave, Harold's Club of Reno and Jesse James's Hideout." Mrs. Gill has also noted every highway sign she has seen that needs correcting. "America," she says, "is full of wrong directions...