Word: englishness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...French Tennis Star Rene Lacoste, known as "le Crocodile" for his snappy style of play, began producing a polo shirt with a crocodile logo on the breast. Lacoste's garment was first marketed in the U.S. in 1951 under the name of a famous English tailor, Jack Izod. The Izod Lacoste shirt quickly became an American standard. In 1972 Lauren introduced a version featuring his own polo-player motif. Polo/Ralph Lauren claims to sell about 4 million of the items annually. Izod Lacoste's U.S. manufacturer is not forthcoming with sales figures, but industry analysts say the older shirt...
...million. Now fitted with hand- carved mahogany woodwork and custom-forged brass trim, and dappled with expansive Oriental rugs and sprays of orchids, the store evokes the imagined atmosphere of a London men's club or a distinguished Edwardian hotel. The display space is cluttered with props, including English saddles, bulbous trophies, top hats and a rack of billiard cues. "Lauren is the only designer with the product range to have such a store," says Nina Hyde, fashion editor of the Washington Post. Some shoppers, though, view the store's atmosphere as contrived...
Unbeknown to an unsuspecting public, Boy George's drug troubles touched off a severe crisis in the journalese-speaking community. How should reporters and pundits, all fluent in journalese as well as English, refer to the suddenly woozy singer? Naturally enough, conventions of the language demanded a hyphenated modifier. "Much-troubled" might have been acceptable, but that adjective is reserved, as are "oil-rich" and "war-torn," for stories about the Middle East. One tabloid, apparently eager to dismiss the celebrity as a wanton hussy, called him "gender-confused pop star Boy George." This was a clear violation of journalese...
...readers realize how much effort is devoted to meshing the disparate tongues of journalese and English. In journalese, for example, the word chilling is an omnibus adjective modifying "scenario" in nuclear-weapons stories, "evidence" and "reminder" in crime stories and "effect" in any story on threats to the First Amendment. In English it is merely something one does with white wine. Reforms and changes can only be "sweeping" and investigations "widening," especially on days when the investigators have no actual news to report. "Mounting" is always followed by pressures or deficits. All arrays are "bewildering," whereas all contrasts are either...
...time for the evening news, Soviet style. The camera focuses on a man with a battered purple baseball cap as he chats with local factory workers. With a friendly, lopsided grin, he says in passable Russian, "Well, I'm just a simple worker." He switches to English and adds through a Soviet interpreter, "I'm ashamed to say it about my country, but in New York there are 60,000 people without a roof over their heads...