Word: item
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...computer-equipped check-out line, all the clerk has to do is pass each item over a Cyclopean eye linked to a cash register and a scale. In a twinkling, the eye "reads" the striped UPC (Universal Product Code) symbol, by which the computer system identifies the product, brand name and other pertinent information about the item. (The store manager can program into the computer price changes for specials or daily fluctuations.) Then the computer prints out both the name of the item (say, one 4-oz. can of sliced French beans) and the price on the receipt list...
...item is not code-marked, or if the clerk mistakenly positions it so that the marking is on the upper surface (and thus invisible to the scanning eye), the computer signals that it has not charged for that merchandise; it will then be added manually to the bill by the check-out clerk. In handling produce that must be weighed, the computer reads the code on the plastic bag containing, say, a half-dozen Delicious apples, but delays ringing up the charge until the bag has been placed on the computer-connected check-out scale. Then, programmed with the price...
...some suggestions for improving the text of the declaration of principles. In fact, Kamel, Vance and Israel's Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan had considerably narrowed the language gap before the Egyptian delegation was ordered home two weeks ago. Still to be resolved, however, was the phrasing of the item involving the nature of a West Bank-Gaza Palestinian entity. The Egyptians favor the words used by Carter at his meeting with Sadat in Aswan last month: recognition of "the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people." The Israelis have accepted the phrase that the Palestinians have the right to "participate...
...became a two-week affair. First a committee established to decide on rules of procedure for the convention met and hashed out decisions on voting rights, quorum size and other issues. Then the full convention, in a classic display of Monday-morning quarterbacking, proceeded to debate the by-laws item by item, and after two meetings agreed on an amended version that looked suspiciously like the original version...
...comes nearest to bearing the same kind of relation to our age as Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe bore to theirs, Kafka is the first one would think of." Kafka has achieved a peculiar sort of extended immortality, alive not only in his books but also as an idea, an item of vocabulary employed by people who never read a phrase he wrote. It is an odd fate for the haunted functionary of the Workers' Accident Insurance Institute in Prague: his magnificent hallucinations have collapsed in the public mind to the scale of a worn-out adjective-one that turns...