Word: gadget
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Since World War 1, schoolboy slang has been enriched by army expressions (e.g., gadget, posh, to do the dirty, to scrounge, to -wangle') and by Americanisms (lay off, scram). Most of it, however, is still the schoolboys' own, often unintelligible to outsiders. A Bootham boy, for example, says: "Just had a juice-meeting with My Lord for tuzhering a bug." Translation: "I've just been reprimanded by the Headmaster for breaking an electric-light bulb." Some other outlandish schoolboy expressions: belly-go-round (a belt), Medes and Persians (the practice of jumping...
Roman Catholic position: Such a gadget is harmless but not efficacious, in the same class as a prayer ring (which has ten notches so that the wearer may count his prayers). Indulgences (i.e., remissions of temporal punishment for repented sin) will not be granted for any number of push-buttoned prayers...
...Dartmouth station, unofficially called WHD, is run by Senior Hugh Dryfoos of Manhattan in his room in Russell Sage Dormitory. Its audience: 40 other students in Russell Sage whose rooms are within WHD's broadcasting range-50 to 75 feet. WHD's transmitter: a one-tube gadget like those used in remote-control record players (and permitted license-free...
High & dry on three floors of Manhattan's Grand Central Palace were 115 motorboats, 35 sailboats, skiffs, prize-winning racers, gadgets, motors, motor fuels. Outstanding gadget: The Hazard Tension Meter, a mandolin-style sound box tunable to a pitch pipe, to attach to yacht rigging for determining desired tautness. Based on a complicated device used for years on America's Cup Defenders, the popular Hazard comes to merer skippers at $25. Outstanding motor yacht: a 57-foot, superluxurious, poly-gadgeted Elco cruiser with clipper bow, flying bridge, streamlined superstructure, berthing a party of six, crew of two. Price...
...hurriedly, perhaps missing a few that had some actual value. The story is still current in Britain that in 1915 a gunner submitted a device for plotting the course of attacking aircraft to increase the accuracy of antiaircraft fire. In 1918 he was finally permitted to demonstrate, and his gadget performed so effectively for altitudes up to 16,000 feet that it was adopted forthwith, helped repel the last big German air raid...