Word: lighter
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...human capacity for insult, denigration and blasphemy seems utterly boundless. University of Tennessee research associate professor Jonathan E. Lighter demonstrated this in 1994 with the first volume of his Historical Dictionary of American Slang (A through G). Volume II (Random House; 736 pages; $65)--beginning with H, a euphemism for hell, and ending 10,000 definitions later at the letter O with Ozzie, an Australian--once again reflects Americans' ingenious talent for verbal invention as well as Lighter's indefatigable scholarship...
...first volume, Lighter shows that most slang terms describe sexual activity or genitalia, or derive from the private lingo of a few groups: the underworld, students, the military, drug users and African Americans. Some terms are merely colorfully descriptive: a No-Tell Motel (1974) is a cheap trysting place; an Oklahoma credit card (1966) is a siphon tube used for stealing gasoline; a kiskeedee (1857) is a French-speaking person who is unable to understand English and keeps asking, "Qu'est-ce qu'il dit?" (What is he saying...
...black in color." There was a time--hard to believe--that the term was considered inoffensive. Over the years, it evolved a huge number of variations, all pejorative, but not, apparently, until the 20th century did it become so execrable a term of opprobrium, especially among whites. Ironically, as Lighter says, many blacks use the N word as an "affectionate, ironic, jocular, or occasional complimentary epithet...
Rubber alone was not good enough; it shredded within a few days. It was only after Chandra and Sethi began to construct the rubber foot around a hinged wooden ankle--wrapping it in a lighter rubber (similar to a bicycle inner tube but flesh colored) and then vulcanizing this composite--that their invention succeeded. The resulting limb takes only 45 minutes to build and fit onto the patient and is sturdy enough to last for more than five years. Sethi says of his partner, "We had a lot of opposition from formally trained doctors. In a way, someone...
Notebook makers have managed to make their machines lighter and more energy-frugal, only to find their gains undone by the need to include the latest and greatest in their models. As soon as manufacturers perfected light and plastic cases and long-running lithium ion batteries, for instance, the coming of Pentium chips and bulky CD-ROM drives negated any winds for portability...