Word: cocking
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...Poppy & the Cricket. The fiesta committee scored its most resounding triumph with the return of the Bersaglieri, the proudest troops of Italy. The Bersaglieri wear plumes of cock feathers in their caps, run instead of march, and in Trastevere, which always had its own regiment, have been a tradition for almost 100 years. Since World War II, however, Trastevere's regiment had been quartered in Milan. With the opening of this year's feast, the first units of the old Trastevere Bersagliere regiment came home, ran heroically through the twisting streets blowing bugles while exuberant Trasteverini welcomed them...
...most resounding byline on the Anglophobe Chicago Tribune belongs to British-born John Lucius Astley-Cock. Now 74, bushy-browed, patrician Astley-Cock has been, among many things, a Cambridge University athlete, linguist, Shakespearean scholar, psychologist and church organist. At the Trib, where he has worked since 1932, his nominal title is assistant education and religion editor. But he has done his most enduring work as the paper's doctor of philology, in charge of amputating letters from words. One day last week, Astley-Cock's byline heralded the latest additions to the Trib's simplified spelling...
...keep the "ff.") Also doomed to Trib extinction: the letters "ph" within a word, which will be replaced by "f," e.g., anglofobe, sofistry, sofomore, sofisticate, biografy. Magnanimously, the Trib granted "ph" the right to continue to exist at the start of words, e.g., philosofy, photog-rafer. Explained Amputator Astley-Cock: "It is a wise policy to recognize the universally valid principle of festina lente (hasten slowly). To abolish 'ph' at the beginning of words would mean to be out of line with the dictionary . . . Where, for instance, would a foreigner or student find 'fthisis' to learn...
Death Among the Blossoms. A grimy, black-toothed Buddhist monk, leaning over a balcony in red-walled, pagoda-roofed Chi Ming (Temple of the Crowing Cock), nods his head down the mountainside toward Lotus Lake. "The willow trees," he says, "are very beautiful this year, but no one seems to care." The willows are blossoming with delicate, pale-green traceries. Peach and cherry blossoms are out, too. Along the top of the crenelated wall that surrounds the city, daisies, pansies and violets bloom. But few notice them in this unhappy spring...
They would often ask that question during the next half dozen years. Gentleman Jimmy was forever darting away from his post in the peak-of-prosperity days-to Florida or Europe or simply to the fights. New York didn't seem to mind. Jimmy was the cock o' the walk, a witty, debonair, fashion-plate Irishman who could charm a bird down out of a tree. "Mr. New York," they called him, and the Big Town "wore [him] in its lapel" like a carnation (as one wit cracked), and threw him away when the Big Party...