Word: handier
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...librarian supplies directions: take that elevator there, cross the lobby, take another elevator to A-level, and, bingo, you're there. But the second elevator has a sign on it: OUT OF SERVICE. PLEASE USE ELEVATOR AT OTHER END OF BUILDING. The stairs are handier, but they lack directional signs and so lead the uninitiated to an underground garage. Back up one flight, through a vast, empty room, into another room containing only a security desk (unattended), just in time to see the ostensibly broken elevator arrive (let's call it Kira's law: cosmic jokers all come out when...
Many of the English words transplanted in this way are simply handier than their Spanish counterparts. No matter how distasteful the subject, for example, it is still easier to say "income tax" than impuesto sobre la renta. At the same time, many Spanish-speaking immigrants have adopted such terms as VCR, microwave and dishwasher for what they view as largely American phenomena. Still other English words convey a cultural context that is not implicit in the Spanish. A friend who invites you to lonche most likely has in mind the brisk American custom of "doing lunch" rather than the languorous...
Some English words are transferred without alteration into Spanglish because they are handier than their Spanish equivalents. Any Spanglish-speaking accountant knows, for instance, that it is easier to say "nineteen forty- five" than "mil novecientos cuarenta y cinco." Says Judith Schomber, an associate professor of Spanish at Georgia Southern College, who hears Spanglish in the conversations of her students: "They plug in the English words unconsciously. It is done so naturally as to be almost undetectable...
...citizen should have the right to protect himself if the state is unable to do so. But few would argue that anyone who enters a subway or walks lonely streets at night should pack a pistol and be ready for a shoot-out. By choice of vocation, thugs are handier with guns than are Wall Street brokers or Macy's salesclerks. Moreover, bystanders can get caught in the cross fire...
...possible now that Yale would arise from the sod and gnaw the Crimson? Maybe, but it was clear even to an observer new to these rites that other matters were more important. Take the matter of the handkerchiefs. A society of pragmatists has decided that Kleenex is handier and more sanitary. The day when every gentleman carried two handkerchiefs is gone, as are most of the gentlemen. That seems to be the point. The old boys of the Eastern Establishment, waving in languid mockery at the foe, are also wigwagging a message to those of us plebes who are watching...