Word: mongrel
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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Last week carpenters, bricklayers, waiters, plasterers, upholsterers, physicians, attorneys, undertakers, mail-carriers, professional singers, church soloists, all stood nattily attired in white trousers and blue coats, sang. The occasion was the Eisteddfod held last week at Swansea, Wales. The mongrel gathering of choristers was the Orpheus male chorus of Cleveland, Ohio, which won first prize from ten other competitors, was declared the greatest male chorus in the world...
...Abyssinians." While Prince Taffari protested 10,000,000 Abyssinians continued an indolent existence upon 350,000 square miles of territory, mostly fertile, very largely held in feudal tenure by innumerable rases (princes), subservant to the Empress. The term "Abyssinian," corrupted from the Arabic Habesh ("mixed," "mongrel") well describes this people who shade in different parts of the Empire from white through reddish-brown to ebony, and from Christianity to Mohammedanism. To the curious traveler's eye, Abyssinia presents a rural scene, picturesquely set off by civic stenches. Camels jog up to French Somaliland with gum and ostrich feathers which...
...famous Tattenham Corner a brown mongrel ran out on the track, tried to nip Colorado's heels. British newspapermen made much of this incident, but it is not likely that it had anything to do with the result of the race. Coronach's speed needed no mongrel help...
...slang, its originality, lost completely. Phrase after-phrase follows the imitative route to a dull oblivion. As a remedy for this stultifying condition, a simple moderation offers itself. And if the College composition courses can safely manoeuvre between the chill formality of Pater's stately sentences and the mongrel style of the streets, a Harvard man may yet produce the great American novel...
Vaudeville has for a long time included among it mass of mongrel terms the phrase, "Three a day". And to both actor and audience it means that labor of love which sends the embryonic Eddie Cantor out in front for fifteen minutes three successive times between luncheon and the final visit to his particular cafeteria for coffee, a Western, and the "Billboard". To the faculty and student body of Harvard College it probably means little or nothing. The three a week is alone vital to them...