Word: gyascutus
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Dates: during 1955-1955
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...utterly frustrated by "gyascutus, prock, tree squeak and swamp gaboon" [Nov. 28]. You frequently footnote less esoteric phrases. Please elucidate...
...Shame on Reader Coggin for not recognizing such denizens of U.S. folklore. The gyascutus (stone-eating variety) resembles the prock, or sidehill sauger, insofar as its telescopic legs enable it to graze easily on steep hillsides; it is unrelated, however, to the tree squeak and swamp gaboon (both offshoots of the lowly whangdoodle group), but it does claim a sort of Pilgrim kinship to the English slithy toves and borogoves...
Goodbye to All That. The leading lady of the great tradition is expected to resemble the gyascutus. prock, tree squeak and swamp gaboon rolled into one. Bernhardt, it is said, would swirl onstage with "eyes that resembled holes burned into a sheet of paper"; her lines she sang in a melodious but somewhat fruity "voice of gold." Rumor had it that she slumbered in a coffin lined with silk. The majestic Modjeska once held a U.S. audience "clutched in [her] spell" with a heartbreaking recital of what she later admitted was the Polish alphabet, and the mighty Duse would petulantly...
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