Word: compound
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Acupuncture. The V.C. took Dodson to a mountain compound called "V.C. Tower." In it were 15 South Vietnamese army prisoners. Soon Dodson was joined by another Danang marine: Corporal Walter Eckes, 20, of New York City. Eckes had been captured four days after Dodson by three Viet Cong dressed in government uniforms as he waited beside a main highway. The two marines were the only English-speaking residents in the lightly guarded camp, save for a planted Vietnamese Communist pretending to be a captured Special Forces soldier...
...tall elephant grass; another time a herd of buffalo chased them. For sustenance, they had the remains of a $16 bag of candy they had bought. Finally they spotted a U.S. C-130 Hercules transport landing behind a ridge and arrived at a South Vietnamese army compound at An Hoa, 20 miles south of Danang-unshaven and tangle-haired, each 30 lbs. lighter, their feet blistered. Grunted a sergeant as they staggered up to the camp perimeter: "You're lucky. My sentry almost shot...
Because of their varying speeds, the compounds that constitute the metabolic products are segregated. As each compound emerges-in order of its speed through the column-it is sensed by an ionization detector and recorded on a graph as a distinct peak. Within minutes, all of the compounds have passed through the chromatograph, each forming its own peak on the graph. Since the metabolic products of each strain of bacteria contain different chem ical compounds, each chromatogram forms an easily identifiable profile...
Most of the remaining space jargon, according to McNeill's analysis, is made up of "nominal compounds"-words strung together endlessly in what scientists consider a logical order to describe complex devices or systems. Controlling the attitude of a ship by ejecting gas through nozzles, for instance, is called "nozzle gas ejection ship attitude control." The longest nominal compound discovered by McNeill appeared in the Congressional Record, and sounded as if it had been translated literally from the German: "liquid oxygen liquid hydrogen rocket powered single stage to orbit reversible boost system...
Possessive Pretension. On the other hand, McNeill stresses, the compound is often used to extremes, especially by those who pretend to possess a degree of technical knowledge that they do not have. Establishing a "pretension index" based on the length of nominal compounds and their frequency of use, he discovered that in their speeches, members of Congress were even more compound-conscious than NASA engineers. A space-technology magazine was a worse offender. It printed 300% more six-word compounds than did written NASA reports...