Word: idioms
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Biblical Baedeker, he takes his listeners strolling down Pavements of Gold, introduces them to a rippling-muscled Christ who resembles Charles Atlas with a halo, then drops them abruptly into the Lake of Fire for a sample scalding. His language is a strange, original blend of farm-boy idiom, Shakespeare, the New Testament and the newest slang. Sample Grahamism, aimed at those who protest that they were raised in good Christian homes, therefore don't need to be "converted": "Just because you were born in a garage, does that make you an automobile...
...reputation, a big voice. She scales the voice down pretty far for the old pulse-bumpers like A Bird in a Gilded Cage, My Mother Was a Lady, Waiting for the Robert E. Lee. The job could have been done with more authority by somebody closer to the idiom...
...vulgar snafu derivatives may have been American in origin . . . but acceptance and widespread dissemination of their useful addition to Anglo-Saxon idiom was peculiarly British and essentially Eighth Armyish. Your correct if prudish definition of snafu as "situation normal, all fouled up" is a reminder that there were exclusively British ascending and descending degrees of snafu. There was the "self-adjusting snafu" and the "non-self-adjusting snafu." And there was the climactic "cummfu," which, roughly translated, meant "complete utter monumental military foul...
...understood. Not, however, Sholom Aleichem, the Ukraine-born Yiddish humorist who died in The Bronx 36 years ago. Sholom Aleichem (real name: Solomon Rabinowitz) was a genuine folk artist. Between himself and his Yiddish public throughout the world there was an instinctive understanding; they could grasp his twists of idiom, his slightest reference to a Torah phrase or a ghetto custom...
Classics in Jazz (Capitol, 18 sides, LP). Well-picked samples of the wide variety of jazz styles of the past half-dozen years. The nine platters: Piano Stylists, Sax Stylists, Dixieland Stylists, Trumpet Stylists, The Modern Idiom, Small Combos, Coleman Hawkins, Woody Herman, Bobby Sherwood...