Word: hail
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Nigeria, we hail thee...
...partial understanding of Johnson, one has to go back to the harsh hill country of west-central Texas where he was born in 1908. Historian Walter Prescott Webb describes it as a land of "nauseating loneliness," whose inhabitants were "far from markets, burned by drought, beaten by hail, withered by hot winds, frozen by blizzards, eaten out by grasshoppers, exploited by capitalists and cozened by politicians...
...detachment assigned to defend Camp Nam Dong, 400 miles north of Saigon. At 2:25 a.m. on July 6, a Viet Cong battalion launched a full-scale surprise attack. In the course of the five-hour battle, DonIon seemed to be everywhere, firing and hurling hand grenades under a hail of enemy bullets and mortar shells. He shot down a three-man Viet Cong demolition team threatening the main gate of the defense compound. He dragged urgently needed ammunition across open areas to gun positions. When he discovered a wounded gun crew, he stayed behind to cover their withdrawal. Donlon...
Topping the list of shopworn journa-ese was the verb "hail," a pet of head-ine writers (MAYOR HAILS HOMETOWN HERO) as well as reporters ("New Yorkers hailed their first rain in six weeks"). Univac awarded second place to the phrase "violence flared," third place to "flatly denied." The rest of the runners-up: "racially troubled," "voters marched to the polls," "jampacked," "usually reliable sources," "backlash," "kickoff" (as applied to anything but a football game), "limped into port," "gutted by fire,-" "death and destruction," "riot-torn," "strife-torn," "tinder-dry woodlands," "in the wake of," "no immediate comment," "guarded optimism...
...wake of Univac's report, the A.P. had no immediate comment. But a usually reliable source hailed with guarded optimism the fact that, percentagewise, the A.P. copy came out relatively cliche-clean. Even the first-place winner, "hail," was found only nine times among the 375,000 words...