Word: hamming
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...ends the day with a foot bath of warm Epsom salts. With food, it's the monotony. In the old days it was always chicken. At one time, he recalled wistfully, it was cold roast beef-until the price of beef went too high. Today it's ham-cold or hot, baked or boiled-but almost always ham, "frequently with raisin sauce." (Taft, delayed by a television appearance, missed the Lions' menu: filet mignon, crabflake gumbo, asparagus tips polonaise...
Turk's Private War. The cops pulled their prey into daylight and eyed him warily. "Have you a gun?" one asked. The man coyly examined himself, peeked inside his undershirt with a smile. "No," he said. The cops let their man dress and breakfast on ham & eggs, then carted him off triumphantly to Amsterdam. At last they had captured the notorious Captain Raymond ("Turk") Westerling, international buccaneer and soldier of misfortune...
...some of the men on trial, questioned their right to probation. When it turned out that three of the gamblers merely had the same names as actual men whose records were printed, the grand jury indicted the American Press for defaming the gamblers and for criticizing Sheriff Henry ("Ham") Reid and District Attorney Griffin Hawkins for not prosecuting them further...
...derivation of "ham" as applied to "h'amateur" actors in your article on Charles Laughton differs from what I believe to be the correct one. The oldtime minstrels used to apply ham-fat to their faces so that their burnt-cork makeup would be easier to remove. They thus became known as "ham-fatters," the word eventually being shortened to "ham," and used to designate any broad, slapstick performances such as those of the minstrels. Now, of course, it simply means bad acting...
...gave the big city some of the Kefauver treatment. He arrived 20 minutes late for an 8 p.m. meeting with Manhattan's Young Democrats, casually shook hands all around, explained that he hadn't eaten dinner, plopped down in the back of the room and ate a ham sandwich. When his 81-year-old father, Robert Cooke Kefauver, appeared in a room where the press was interviewing the candidate, Estes called: "Hello, Poppsy." He led his father into the circle formed by the press, and announced: "This is my daddy...