Word: embarrass
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...doomed quest succeeds admirably, in part because he, like Samuel Beckett, recognizes the comic possibilities inherent in the tailspin of logic toward the absurd. Mr. Palomar's relentless speculations render him buffoonish. Passing a woman sunbathing topless on a beach, he averts his eyes lest she cover herself and embarrass them both. On reflection, though, he decides that his behavior was incorrect, since it reinforced outmoded taboos against nudity. So he walks by again, this time taking in the bare breasts as an incidental feature in the general landscape. But that was wrong too, he concludes, because it denied...
...that climate, Washington seized an unexpected chance to embarrass the Soviets by publicizing the spy-dust episode. As a propaganda opportunity, it ranked with the 1976 disclosure that the Soviets were bombarding the embassy with potentially harmful microwaves, apparently in an effort to eavesdrop on communications. U.S. officials gave this account: as early as 1976, microscopic pinches of NPPD were found at the embassy. The chemical is a synthetic one concocted in Soviet laboratories and almost unmentioned in scientific literature. It has no known use except for espionage. It is odorless and, in the tiny quantities normally used, invisible...
Parents' speaking a foreign language can embarrass children. Riki Hayashi, 6, shocked his Japanese-born mother Kaori last year by announcing that he did not want her to speak her native tongue when his schoolmates came to visit at their Culver City, Calif., home. "All his friends are American, and in his concept of himself he is American," sighs Kaori. The parents' poor command of English can prove awkward. Children are pressed into service for their immigrant parents in all kinds of circumstances: when the electric company sends a dunning notice, the landlord needs a lease signed, a policeman needs...
Comfortable as this slang may be, confusion sometimes results, especially since the borrowed English is generally pronounced as if it were Spanish. Spanglish-speaking chicanos, for instance, have taken to using embarrassar to mean "embarrass," which is what happens when that word is mistaken for embarazar, a Spanish word that sounds the same but means "to become pregnant." Moreover, many U.S. Hispanics have grown up hearing so much Spanglish that they are not sure which words are really English. Says Pedro Pedraza of the Puerto Rican studies department at Manhattan's Hunter College: "I've heard of Puerto Rican kids...
...unless he's trying to embarrass them by showing up at all their cocktail parties...