Word: hocuspocus
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...partly Mafia omerta, a combination of such qualities as manliness, honor and willingness to keep secrets. Its requirements have never changed. The penalty for breaching the code: death. Except for the Chicago branch, which has always disdained the ornate, members are bound by an elaborate ceremony of medieval hocuspocus. Flanked by the boss and his lieutenants, the initiate and his sponsor may stand in front of a table on which are placed a gun and, on occasion, a knife. The boss picks up the gun and intones in the Sicilian dialect: "Niatri representam La Cosa Nostra. Sta famigghia...
...believe that there are those in this impressionable world who might be led to believe that a PBK member from Harvard was necessarily a better student than one who was not a member. Under present conditions, this assumption is simply not true. Why not scrap this behind-the-scenes "hocuspocus" and determine election by objective means: by giving a certain weight to (1) the student's average, (2) his generals, and (3) his thesis--and nothing else. The highest 90 on such a scale should be elected. Those below would at least know why they were rejected. Inclusion of thesis...
...Hahn took a fling at the P.G.A. tournament circuit after World War II, quit after two years ("I wasn't making any money"), and went back to telling duffers the difference between a mashie and a niblick. To keep himself amused, he tried "a little hocuspocus" on the practice tee, and club members started showing up to applaud such antics as hitting two balls simultaneously, one with a hook, the other with a slice. Aha! thought Hahn, and hit the road as a trick-shot artist. In the 15 years since, Hahn has visited 37 countries, traveled...
CLAES OLDENBURG-Janis, 15 East 57th. Known for "happenings" and Hamburgers, Oldenburg performs a new kind of artistic hocuspocus. With a fine feeling for materials, he instills inanimate objects with Geist, then wrenches from them a whole range of emotions. His Soft Telephone, its mouthpiece dangling, its coin box regurgitating, is a sad sack in shiny black vinyl. A Soft Typewriter, its pearly Plexiglas keys hopelessly entangled, collapses into its shell with the mortification of a machine that suddenly finds itself ready for IBM's junk heap. Other objects in 22 materials along with some drawings. Through...