Word: flatten
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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With this in mind an adjustment was made to flatten the playing area. Now the 10 yard line in football serves as the 18 yard line in soccer, the soccer goaline is two yards in from the end on the end-zone, and the goalie is happily placed back on a level surface...
...Forest Service claims, the forests often have to be replanted with seedlings, a difficult and hazardous task, especially on steep slopes. McGee also said that timber companies favor clear-cutting over selective cutting (the removal of only ripe or harmful trees) because they can use giant machines that flatten thousands of trees a day, a money-saving if destructive practice...
...ultimate criticism of the overcomplicator is not that he fuzzes but that he fudges. If the cardinal sin of the oversimplifier is to inflate the trivial, the cardinal sin of the overcomplicator is to flatten the magnificent-or just pretend that it is not there. In the vocabulary of the '70s, there is an adequate language for fanaticism, but none for ordinary, quiet conviction. And there are almost no words left to express the concerns of honor, duty or piety...
...dancers form this circle and look across and sideways at one another shyly or with some contempt. And the very good dancers check to see that their knees and toes are turned out at just the proper angle, and the very pretty dancers draw deep breaths to flatten their tummies, and the very smug dancers continue to look blase and shake their legs, like world-weary professionals...
Debasement of the language cannot be blamed on protesters alone. The news media, the advertising agencies, the Government-even President Nixon himself-have all helped flatten and attenuate the English tongue. When radicals misuse language, they are only applying the lesson they have been so well taught by their society. That lesson has been reinforced by philosophers now in fashion-Marshall Mc-Luhan, for instance, who says that pictures are more important than words and contemplates a society of inarticulate tribal emotions based on instant sight and sound. Or Herbert Marcuse, who teaches that protesting words are as empty...