Word: humidities
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...humid backwash that numbs all feeling...
FIRE ANTS. All kinds of bugs thrive in the warm, humid climate prevalent in much of the South. But none have achieved more notoriety than the fire ant, a South American invader that gained a beachhead in New Orleans in 1918 and has since advanced through nine Southern states. The ants, as their name implies, have searing bites that can kill small animals and raise painful blisters on humans. Farm workers often refuse to enter fields infested with fire ant mounds, which often rise two or three feet above the ground and are sturdy enough to stop a tractor...
...grueling campaign to get acquainted with the voters, only a few hundred of whom had even heard his name when Echeverria picked him last September. Since then, his campaign bus Quetzalcoatl (for the plumed serpent of pre-Columbian lore) has logged 40,600 miles, traversing the countryside from the humid south to the High Sierras...
There is serious question, though, as to how long the euphoria will last. Surinam, which formally becomes independent at midnight this Tuesday, is a polyglot* New England-size former Dutch colony on South America's humid equatorial coast, with some exotic and bitter divisions. The new nation's largest single racial group−129,500 East Indians known locally as Hindustanis−almost universally opposed independence. They feared political and economic repression by the 108,500 Creoles (blacks and mulattoes), most of whom belong to leftist-influenced parties supporting Prime Minister Arron. Joining forces with Surinam...
Body Stealer. There is some padding in the 13,390 entries. Is anyone likely to misplace humid or fervent or dawdle? Bernstein includes some delightful, half-remembered curios-a body stealer, for example, is a resurrectionist. But where is mooncalf? Where is poshlust? Sometimes the clue words are elusive. If one goes hunting for callipygian, he cannot look under "buttocks, rounded" or some such, but must hit "shapely buttocks" or "beautiful buttocks." ("Buttocks that are fat" yields steatopygia-which is a different matter altogether.) Bernstein's backward dictionary is a kind of combination thesaurus and crossword-puzzle dictionary...