Word: pecksniffian
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There is not much inventiveness of language these days either, no Menckenish words like "pecksniffian," no Rabelais around to rail against "slubberdegullion druggies, ninny lobcocks, or scurvy sneaksbies." Our social conscience interferes as well-the feeling that life offers enough abuse without adding insults to injuries. In short, we are simply too reverent, too reverent about the wrong things. In the past no one was safe. Macaulay said of Socrates: "The more I read him, the less I wonder that they poisoned...
...twelve Irish M.P.s were hauled from their seats by police when other efforts to eject them failed. In an attempt to make debate more seemly, Speakers of the past have banned "grossly insulting language" and the use of such words as villain, hypocrite, murderer, insulting dog, swine, Pecksniffian cant, cheat, stoolpigeon and bastard. In the 1880s, one Charles Bradlaugh was refused his seat because he was an avowed atheist. When Bradlaugh tried to take it anyway, he battled ten Bobbies to a draw until he fainted from his exertions...
...judge from the summary of editorial comment, sniffed the Pecksniffian New York Post, "the G.O.P. has clearly renominated Abraham Lincoln." The composite image of Republican Presidential Nominee Richard Milhous Nixon that emerged from the nation's press last week was hardly Lincolnesque. But with few exceptions, U.S. newspapers liked the way the Republicans ran their convention, ratified their choices, and cheered the first speeches in what looked to be a rousing good campaign. Said the Philadelphia Bulletin in an editorial: "They simply put the best foot forward...
...ever since. It includes a list of insulting words and phrases which the Speaker has ruled unsuitable for use in House of Commons debate. Among the banned expressions: insulting dog, behaving like a jackass, cad, caddishness, scurrilous, vicious vulgar, dishonest, swine, corrupt, criminal, blether (as applied to a speech), Pecksniffian cant. Last week the fifteenth edition of "Erskine May" was published; it showed four new epithets barred since the war's end: not a damned one of you opposite, stool pigeons, cheat, bastard...
...other companies] have been a matter of public information for many years, the motive for this suit must arise out of a determination ... to attack bigness in business as such." The New York Herald Tribune agreed. It gave the back of its hand to Tom Clark for "Pecksniffian" charges, and said: "Mere size is the Government's primary target [though] the Government itself has fostered bigness in American industry...