Word: gnaw
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...heart of the matter is cased in a padding of sociological fat. Life, Aran Islander O'Flaherty seems to say, can only be understood in terms of death. Like many another Irishman, he sees the skull beneath the skin, just as his starveling heroes see the sharp rocks gnaw through the thin soil. ("I wish you a happy death," cries one after another of his characters, as if the wish were the greatest thing life had to offer.) To underline his point that man's nature is animal, O'Flaherty has written of hawks, cows, rockfish, conger...
...simple as to be almost nonexistent is Beckett's tale of two penniless, hapless, smelly tramps waiting, in a barren countryside, for a neighborhood personage named Godot. They chatter, gnaw carrots, tug at a tight shoe, talk of going separate ways and of hanging themselves, encounter a rich, unhappy magnate driving his servant before him as with whips. At the end of Act 1, a boy arrives to say that Godot cannot come that night but will the next. The next night, after further waiting and talking, a boy arrives to say that again Godot cannot come. As before...
...Switch to Salt. Bell Labs' war on the grey squirrel dates back to the turn of the century, when the company first became conscious of the squirrels' appetite for the lead sheath in which telephone wires are encased. After the squirrels gnaw through the sheath, linemen found, moisture gets at the paper insulation around the wires, causing a short circuit and disrupting communications. Engineers went to work to find out what it is in the lead that appeals to squirrels. According to one theory, the squirrels are suffering from a nutritional disorder caused by a lack of calcium...
According to another theory, only "neurotic" squirrels gnaw. One researcher cooped up a group of squirrels in cages, provided them with all kinds and sizes of cable to chew on (0.5 in. proved most popular). He concluded that young, emotionally unstable squirrels and pregnant squirrels undergoing a change in their nervous systems are the most destructive gnawers. It was not as easy to find a solution, however. Emotionally upset squirrels, the engineers found, do not insist on lead sheaths; they are just as eager to chew on cables wrapped with copper screening or glass tape...
...reserves had poured out during Gaitskell's tenure, Butler reminded the House that "all the records show is that cheese imports were reduced to save $40 million." Butler gestured scornfully towards Gaitskell, sitting opposite. "This marvelous roaring lion," he said, "is a little mouse who could only gnaw at a piece of cheese...