Word: dumbed
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...continue to behave this way, we shall have another war on our hands, just as sure as God made little apples. As a matter of fact, very few of us want to be gluttons; we are just dumb, and take our plenty for granted. So how about a little enlightenment, before it is too late...
Britannia's Progress. Said Hogarth: "My picture is my stage, and men and women my players, who, by means of certain actions and gestures, are to exhibit a dumb show." His two greatest "dumb shows," Harlot's Progress and Rake's Progress, sold like fish & chips but, in an age when only portraits or "historical" paintings in the grand manner were considered Art, the connoisseurs ignored them. And because the characters were real enough to recognize, no one thought of comparing either series of engravings with Bunyan's great book...
Born Yesterday brings Brock to Washington, where he has bought a Senator, to try to grab off junk yards all over the postwar world. He installs himself, his henchman and his dumb blonde mistress in a fantastic $235-a-day hotel suite. Since there will be forays into official Washington society, he decides that the blonde had better get educated. His choice of a teacher is a crusading young writer on the New Republic. From there on everything in the play is predictable, but piquant. The young woman, who defines peninsula as "that new medicine," is soon taught words like...
...free corn to anyone attending its classes. A special stamp issue was put out to help pay for 4,000,000 Government-issued primers. One illiterate old Indian chief solemnly promised Minister Bodet to make the people of his village literate even if he had to kill off the dumb ones...
...pulling letters, you can give the clients the lovey-dovey stuff or you can give 'em the old one-two. Red Lewis gives 'em the old one-two. So they give him $500,000. That's just sound business practice. Maybe Lewis wasn't so dumb after all. He certainly knew where the duck was going to fall...