Word: mooncalfing
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Body Stealer. There is some padding in the 13,390 entries. Is anyone likely to misplace humid or fervent or dawdle? Bernstein includes some delightful, half-remembered curios-a body stealer, for example, is a resurrectionist. But where is mooncalf? Where is poshlust? Sometimes the clue words are elusive. If one goes hunting for callipygian, he cannot look under "buttocks, rounded" or some such, but must hit "shapely buttocks" or "beautiful buttocks." ("Buttocks that are fat" yields steatopygia-which is a different matter altogether.) Bernstein's backward dictionary is a kind of combination thesaurus and crossword-puzzle dictionary...
...early stages of Bed and Board, the marriage is deftly presented as an even mixture of affection, innocence and Gallic eccentricity. Antoine and Christine play games at bedtime; Antoine manages to land then lose a succession of unlikely jobs; Christine bears their first child. But Doinel, the eternal mooncalf, is lured away by a Japanese girl. He moves in with the Oriental, who speaks no French and proceeds by slow inches to drive her new lover crazy with boredom. Antoine then woos Christine anew, discussing his general dissatisfaction and lassitude. Long-suffering but still loving, she thinks it over...