Word: jerk
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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When Miriam, aged 6½, first appeared at Babies Hospital in Manhattan, there was not even a name in the medical dictionaries for what ailed her. She had repeated attacks of vomiting; reflexes like the knee-jerk were dulled or lacking; her hands and feet were blue and cold; she perspired so heavily that her bedclothes had to be changed soon after she fell asleep; her blood pressure skyrocketed and plummeted inexplicably; when she had a temper tantrum, which was often, she broke out in red blotches. But her strangest symptom sounded like something out of a fairy tale...
...South Korea's bantamweight(123¼ lbs.) weightlifter Ho Yu In, who set a world mark of 285 lbs. for the two-hand clean and jerk...
Poet Grudin's aim is simply to do the same job all over again in a Times Square accent. His hero is "Louie Bloom Jerce, the inky darkling," i.e., a Joycean "jerk" whose attachment to writing has made him black as ink and a bit of an Irish "darlin"' into the bargain. This opus is Inky's "histree" - which means, of course, both "his tree" and personal "history." Inky admits that, unlike Jerce, he is not much of a scholar - "the penalty for not sticking to my last from the first." He advises people...
...right eye for his trouble. Paddy was still fresh, cocky enough to move in and show his old Pier Six ability at roughhouse infighting. Once or twice, he admitted after the fight, he felt so good that he was tempted to charge in head down and "fight like a jerk." But he kept control. Only once did the referee have to warn him about butting...
Camouflaging his stubborn shyness with a businesslike air, he sat and examined the keyboard closely whenever the New York Philharmonic-Symphony played without him. As his entrances approached, he grew tense, and his body began to sway and jerk to the rhythm. But there was nothing jerky about his playing. From his crashing fanfares to his softly rippling passagework, his performance had the strength and luster of blue steel. When the music ended, there was a moment of silence before the crowd recovered itself enough to start cheering...