Word: conferred
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Through blind physics, the Antarctic can confer on a dead seal the splendor of an Arthurian burial rite. A corpse will become frozen beneath some floating ice, then rise slowly to the top as ice forms below and evaporates above. Once on the surface, the body insulates the underlying ice from the sun, causing it to form a pedestal as the surrounding ice recedes. Eventually, the ice breaks up, and the seal, mummified by the dry, cold climate, drifts out to sea. As layers of warm and cold air bend light and play tricks on the eye, it can appear...
However, I would like to correct two glaring errors in the article that fail to confer credit where it is due. First, though Zack Sung did manage to create an incredible set, the artist who Tiwari accidentally assumed was Sung was in fact the Artistic Designer, Sam T. Pfister...
...might be accepted. It is rarely "accepted;" we aren't here to accept or reject--we're here to be amused. The more dazzling, personal, unorthodox, paradoxic your assumptions (paradoxes are not equivocations), the more interesting an essay is likely to be. (If you have a chance to confer with the assistant in advance, of course--and we all like to be called "assistants," not "graders"--you may be able to ferret out one or two cosmic assumptions of his own; seeing them in your bluebook, he can only applaud your uncommon perception. For example, while most graders are politically...
Unfortunately, scientists still don't understand what an HIV vaccine must do to confer immunity. Bolognesi hopes to develop a kind of booster shot that, although it might be less than 100% protective, could help the immune system hold the virus at bay until a truly effective vaccine is discovered...
...movies have catapulted catchphrases before--Get Smart launched Would you believe...? and Sorry about that into nationwide use in the 1970s--but this newer slang is different. It is supposed to confer upon its users an edge, sometimes a comedic but always a faintly combative edge. The era of Saturday Night Live that dished out Dennis Miller's "I'm outta here" and Dana Carvey's "Isn't that special?" fed a hunger for a renewable supply of ironic put-downs. But what may have started as a boomer/Xer shtick has now become a reflex common to all ages, from...