Word: foggings
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...IRAN Fear In spite of the fondest hopes of the U.S. State Department, the Iran air showed no signs of clearing. Instead, the fog of fanaticism, misjudgment and threatening disaster continued to hang heavily over the strategic land and its strategic oilfields...
...professor of journalism finally wore down the Boston Herald. As a onetime reporter, editor and news analyst, Boston University's Dr. David Manning White is allergic to newspaper cliches and "fog words" (i.e., seldom-used words), has been needling Boston papers about their use of them. Last week the Herald waved the white flag, editorialized: "In view of the Professor's unfortunate exposé of Boston newspaper punditing, we have little alternative but to follow his advice...
Three days later it backslid, ran the headline: HEARINGS STRESS ACHESON UBIQUITY. Professor White, 33, spotted "ubiquity" as one of the thickest fog words, made a bet with John Crider, the Herald's chief editorial writer, that few readers knew what it meant. To prove it, White stood in front of the Boston Public Library and polled 72 passersby. His findings: only 19.4% correctly thought that "ubiquity" meant "everywhere-at-the-same-time"; most thought (by association with the name "Acheson") that it referred to "errors...
Confusion. White began making his collection of fog words last spring, by picking 25 sentences from New York and Boston newspapers. Sample sentence: "He has marshaled his oft-reiterated and unproved allegations to obfuscate and postpone decisions." White asked some 200 students and parents whether obfuscate meant reverse, change, confuse or rearrange. Only 23 knew it meant confuse Results were similar for such standbys as plebiscite, inculcate, anomaly, shibboleth, indigenous, cataclysms, aggrandizement tantamount, statutory, encroachment, implementation and peripheral...
Even a landlubber who only goes down to the sea in books knows that the first seamen to board a ship adrift and take her in tow can claim salvage. Last fortnight, in a Gulf of Mexico fog, the Esso oil tanker Greensboro collided with the Esso tanker Suez and caught fire, killing 38 of the Greensboro's 42-man crew. The captain and crew of a rival tanker Virginia, which was nearby, saw a chance to invoke the sea's ancient...