Word: origin
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Rome has celebrated Ferragosto for some 2,000 years. Most historians trace its origin to the three-day jeriae augustales (holidays of Augustus) proclaimed in 29 B.C. in honor of the triumphant return of Caesar Augustus from his campaign against Antony and Cleopatra. Some say it has even earlier beginnings. Six centuries later it became a universal Roman Catholic holiday, celebrating the anniversary of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary into heaven...
...vulgar snafu derivatives may have been American in origin . . . but acceptance and widespread dissemination of their useful addition to Anglo-Saxon idiom was peculiarly British and essentially Eighth Armyish. Your correct if prudish definition of snafu as "situation normal, all fouled up" is a reminder that there were exclusively British ascending and descending degrees of snafu. There was the "self-adjusting snafu" and the "non-self-adjusting snafu." And there was the climactic "cummfu," which, roughly translated, meant "complete utter monumental military foul...
...side could construe as it wished: '"We believe that it is the primary responsibility of each state to order and control its own domestic institutions . . . However, we believe that the Federal Government should take supplemental action within its constitutional jurisdiction to oppose discrimination against race, religion or national origin...
...activities of "these faithful administrative officials," especially those of Baldur von Schirach, who put us youngsters in uniforms, taught us to tell on our parents if they should disagree with the Nazi ideas, taught us to hate the Jews and generally all other people except those of Germanic origin, I must strongly protest. The nerve of Mr. Thompson...
...case where sterility of mental origin is overcome by medical help, said Dr. Kroger, "the same psychological difficulties which once prevented conception may influence the child's psychic development, and just as in the case of the emotionally immature but fertile woman, another member is added to an endless procession of neurotics. Therefore, the physician must.be aware that apparently 'successful' treatments of [such] sterility without adequate psychotherapy may actually become a hollow triumph...