Word: peculiar
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...record, Agassi, though a humble champion, thought the theory was right. And the fact that four of his eight grand slam victories were Australian Open titles did nothing to undermine it. The first grand slam event of the year, the Australian Open poses a peculiar challenge to the players. Apart from a warm-up event or two, it's their first tournament for more than a month and follows a festive period often characterised by rest, (relative) overindulgence and an aversion to anything that reminds them of tennis. Thus, the Oz Open tends to favor two types of player...
...that shall live in infamy. Or maybe not. In the dead of a New England winter, Harvard students awoke to golden sunshine, gentle breezes, and temperatures in the high 60s, donned shorts and t-shirts, and emerged from their beds to a peculiar scene. The Yard was littered with sunbathers, Frisbee games, and even an impromptu barbeque. It was awesome...
John Harvard’s statue enjoys a peculiar fate. From the moment the sun rises, tourists come by the busload to stand before him like pilgrims gazing upon a relic. From the moment the sun sets, people pee on him. This combination of veneration by day and urination by night is one of Harvard College’s most pregnant idiosyncrasies. It reveals the startling contrast between the way the world perceives Harvard and the way that we perceive ourselves, and an arrogance more rank than the sewage drenching John Harvard every Saturday night...
...Jefferson himself seemed untroubled by such questions Saturday evening as the vote tallies showed him walloping his runoff rival, state representative Karen Carter, by a 20-percentage-point margin. (Because of Louisiana's peculiar open primary system, the two top finishers in November's election, both Democrats, squared off weeks later.) Jefferson, in his victory speech, vowed to "do all that I can, all that is in my power, with the help and grace of God, to serve you as fully, as effectively as I possibly...
...what accounts for the peculiar position that this word has in our culture? It is a word that has been delegitimized over the years, and its original contexts are largely unknown to Americans born after the 1960s. So here’s a history lesson: the n-word represents to an older generation the vicious and violent resistance to the Civil Rights movement that convulsed the South in the 1950s and ’60s. It encapsulates an attitude toward blacks that denies their very humanity...