Word: idea
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Fusel OiL During Prohibition most U. S. drinkers came to regard "fusel oil" as an ingredient of unsavory whiskey and a cause of bad hangovers. Alluding to this idea with some irony last week, Industrial Chemist W. B. D. Penniman of Baltimore stated that fusel oil is the collective name for six complex alcohols which are the most important factor in determining the flavor of good whiskey. Usually they are present in percentages of only a few tenths of 1%. When a customer sued an Irish distiller for damages to his health from drinking whiskey which, he claimed, contained...
...give his invention-run off on an oval wooden track indoors-a wholesome fresh-air touch, Promoter Seltzer hit on the idea of making the standard distance 4,000 miles, calling the events Transcontinental Derbies, encouraging the illusion by wall maps with bulbs to show the imaginary geographical position of the contestants. Roller Derby teams in the Hippodrome last week were officially racing "the short course" from Salt Lake City to New York, via Route 30. First, after three of the 21 days the Derby is supposed to last, were Millie Duello and her partner Johnny Rosasco...
...going out into the woods and 'squealing up,' or calling wild animals to your side by making noises which appeal to them. . . . As is nearly always the case in London, the sport was founded on a letter to the editor of the Times. A gentleman had an idea, he wrote in, the letter was published and the game was born. . . . His description of the 'squealing up,' with his groundskeeper, of a litter of fox cubs will give an idea of the fascination of the sport...
...something by Arthur Wing Pinero. No such impressive starting gun has ever inspired the art world, but for the past two years a modest parallel has existed in the annual shows of Government-inspired art held in Manhattan early in September. At these exhibitions taxpayers are given some idea of what unemployed artists and others on WPA rolls are producing for their money...
Etymologists have long recognized the difference between U. S. and British English, but it was a layman, Henry Louis Mencken (The American Language), who first popularized the idea that U. S. citizens speak a tongue of their own. Eleven years ago the University of Chicago asked slight, bearded Professor Sir William Alexander Craigie, since 1901 co-editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, to collect in definitive form the words that have meanings and currency peculiar to the U. S. Last week in Chicago appeared the first section, A-to-Baggage, of his long-awaited Dictionary of American English on Historical...