Word: lapping
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...filled and emptied, filled and emptied as the days wore on. Still the lights burned steadily. Beneath them, around and around and around a broad wooden track, banked steep and high at the corners, a band of hunched-over bicycle riders ground their pedals up and down incessantly, circling lap after lap, mile after mile without leaving the ellipse. It was an international six-day race, for Distance against Time, for Money against Monotony. Tex Rickard, promoter, chewed cigars, watched the customers come and go, talked with his henchmen, went home and slept, came back again to chew, watch, talk...
There was some excitement. Friends of the riders would come, bringing bands, flags, popcorn, whiskey, noise. Now and again an ambitious rider, chafing at the long grind, would flash forth and seek to lap the field with a burst of speed. The pack would leap out in pursuit, catch him, or he it, from the rear, then settle down again. Every few hours came compulsory sprints, for points. And bored spectators would sometimes get the announcer's ear, offer $20, $100, to the winner of a special sprint. Megaphoned to, the riders would tense, dart away, tear over the line...
...year, Prof. Baker set off for a well-earned sabbatical, and the Crimson (undergraduate daily) scored the authorities for "polished neglect" of Prof. Baker and his work. Nothing notable in this situation-until, last week, adroitly timed as such things usually are, a windfall landed in the lap of Yale University. Edward S. Harkness, Manhattan Maecenas, gave $1,000,000 to the Yale School of Fine Arts for the establishment of a dramatics department, the erection of a theatre, the gathering of a dramatics faculty. Speedily Prof. George Pierce Baker was invited to lead this faculty. Speedily he accepted. Presto...
...years of age we are welcomed to manhood and citizenship; at 60 and 70 we do not like to have the dates well-known because we wish to be considered younger; at 80 we begin to brag about our age; and when we enter upon the last lap or the century at 90, then the world rejoices and helps us along...
...adopt the less complex and more indigenous cognomen under which he has become so pleasantly-and to himself, profitably-known. On the whole, The London Venture will be of some considerable interest to those who crave to know the man behind the pen-name, to those who eagerly lap every drop of ink that may flow from his cleft pen, to those who like to proclaim themselves as having read "every word" any given writer has ever written. It is not a good book with which to make Mr. Arlen's acquaintance...