Word: eau
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...eau Froide & Low Freight. When the first Spaniards and Frenchmen set foot in the New World they bestowed their most resounding titles on their settle ments and, like the Indians, kept the simpler, descriptive names for streams, woods and hillocks. But to their plain, pioneering successors, both these sorts of names were fancy nuisances. When a henchman of King Philip of Spain sonorously created La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco (The Royal City of the Holy Faith of Saint Francis), he had hardly turned his back before it was ruthlessly hacked down to what...
...French fared even worse. Some of their importations survived (portage, grand rapids, mile, prairie), but by the time a few generations of American settlers had gone to work on them, L'eau Froide (cold water) was Low Freight, Pomme de Terre was Pumly Tar, and the dignified river L'Ours (bear) was simply Louse Creek. Strangest of all, perhaps, was the fate of a settlement named after the Dutchman De Geoijen. In short order it became De Queen, and the local news paper De Queen...
...greying, heavier, and a meticulous dresser. There was always a knifeedged crease in his trousers and his shoes glittered. He said: "I feel spiffy when I'm dressed just right." He carried a half-dozen clean handkerchiefs and sprayed himself with eau de cologne...
...Eau Claire, Wis., 27-year-old John Weisbrocker passed his physical test, was told he was in fine shape, forthwith fell dead of a heart attack...
...from which he graduated by a judicious choice of snap courses; had started as a runner in Wall Street, been taken into the firm by his father when he showed signs of getting married. Park's father tried to act like an English squire by smelling of tweeds, eau de cologne and tobacco, and by tracking birds across the Long Island marshes, accompanied by his docile wife and an unsatisfactory setter. His generation was bothered by taxes, the New Deal, and the encroachment of the big city and its Sunday panzer divisions. Park's generation was bothered, intermittently...