Word: motly
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When slim Filipino Nurse Pet Duruin arrived in Viet Nam, the first Vietnamese words she learned were: "Mot ngay ba vien," meaning "one tablet three times a day." Nurse Duruin repeated this phrase as often as 200 times a day as she passed out quinine and sulfa pills from her own thin, bronzed hand to the equally bronzed but thinner hands of the wretched refugees streaming in from the Communist north. For this was October 1954, following the invasion debacle that ended with the surrender of Dienbienphu to the Reds...
...other circles, merde is not a dirty word by any means, but a form of farewell and best wishes considered far more profound and more affectionate than other, more ordinary phrases. It has the special distinction of being called "the five-letter word." It is also called the mot de Cambronne because General Cam-bronne, when asked to surrender to the British at Waterloo, anticipated America's General McCauliffe by some 132 years and replied: "Merde...
Canada's peripatetic External Affairs Chief Lester Bowles ("Mike") Pearson, bandying spirit-of-Geneva small talk with Soviet big shots during a social visit to Moscow last week, clinked champagne glasses with Deputy Premier Lazar Kaganovitch and pitched a slow-curve bon mot: "We in Canada have an interesting geographical position in the world-between the Soviet Union and the United States . . . You might say we are the ham in the sandwich." Suggested Kaganovitch politely: "Or perhaps a good bridge?" "Well," agreed Pearson, "perhaps that's a nicer way of putting...
...article "Revolt & Revenge" [Sept. 5] is a good treatment of the subject, but pour-quoi do you find it necessaire to interrupt your English-speaking readers' trains of thought every now and again with un mot français? The practice strikes me as a bit stupide...
...length Bishop Tu turned to Bao Dai for help, and Father Quynh, now promoted to War Minister, began to get some real arms. Every parish was transformed into a training camp resounding with the call of mot hay, mot...