Word: heeler
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...joined the party in search of prestige, power and patronage. Today a good Tito Communist is expected not only to tread the delicate ideological line between Russian Stalinism and Western capitalism, but to spend a good part of his time attending ward meetings, canvassing his neighbors like a Tammany heeler, doing his homework in Marxism and paying party dues that range up to 3% of his wages...
...With a group of captains and lieutenants he seized control of Camp Columbia, the key army base outside Havana from which he first rode to power 19 years ago. Addressing the troops, he told them he was taking over because the country had lost confidence in the current "ward-heeler government." Batista, who had been a long-shot presidential candidate in the elections scheduled for June, also said: "I had news that President Prio, faced with the defeat of his candidate, was planning a fake revolution for April...
...every three students "heels" strenuously for hard-won posts on the Yale News, the athletic manager hierarchy, or even the Student Laundry Association, in eye-blearing competitions that often demand 70 hours a week. The word "heel" perhaps refers to that part of the clothing most evident as the heeler hustles down streets selling ads, rushes through New Haven collecting bills, and bends over to swab floors and dump trash buckets. Or, as one heeler suggested last week, it may derive from a dog's heeling...
...heeler makes the grade, his reward is "prestige." That's a word often heard around New Haven. When a man breaks onto the Yale Record he is admired by everyone, not because he can write well, which he often can't but because he has achieved success and become a wheel. As one Eli explained, he "fought and conquered." Ask a Yalie who the "big men on campus" are, and he'll reel off a dozen or so names and positions. Year-book polls show that 70 percent of the students "admire students who occupy important extra-curricular positions...
Yale's definition of success excludes the man who too ardently seeks to get ahead. Elis frown on the "pusher." A heeler is thus in the disconcerting position of working night and day on an activity, and at the same time exuding the impression that he really isn't interested. As a result, Yalies often look apathetic and uninspired in performing their extra-curricular functions...