Word: naming
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...young Iranian's name (Behzadnia) was difficult to pronounce, so American journalists called him Yellow Jack et, after the color of his windbreaker. He approached the representatives of ABC, CBS and NBC in Tehran with a tantalizing prospect: an interview with one of the hostages at the U.S. embassy. But there were catches. The networks would have to submit their questions in advance, broadcast the program live (to prevent any editing) in prime time, and allow Iranian students to make statements and ask questions of their...
...appearance in the U.S. had to be delayed a year for lack of supply. As it happens, Opium is marketed by a subsidiary of the Squibb Corp., the U.S. pharmaceutical firm, which pays the Yves Saint Laurent fashion house a royalty in return for the use of its name. More galling to the French, Opium is a strong scent; it thus follows in the style of the brash and popular American perfumes, like Revlon's Charlie and Jontue, that are edging out long dominant French brands as the leading sellers in West Germany, Britain and Switzerland, among other markets...
...with $737 million for the French. Girding themselves against further U.S. competition, many older French perfume houses have sought mergers with larger European corporations, and a long moribund national perfume-promoting organization called Prestige has been revived. Says Bernard Lanvin, head of the family-owned firm that bears his name: "Until recently we were content to compete among ourselves. Now we're closing ranks...
...wedding guests is J.C. Salley's father, a Columbia University professor, commits an unacknowledged theft from a Cheever short story when commenting on his older brother: "What can you do with a man like that?" Even an apparently innocent comment by Salley carries, given the name of the author, some ironic freight: "Graceful prose was never my father's strong suit...
Such in-joking helps distinguish Looking for Work from the 8 trillion or so recent novels about young women trying to find themselves. The chief point of the exercise seems to be fun. No matter how much she protests, Salley is a confirmed flibbertigibbet, her name itself an amusingly pointless steal from a poem by Yeats ("Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet"). Life has given her every advantage, including just the right number of trendy neuroses. Though she claims to spend a large portion of her story job hunting, what she really looks...