Word: phobias
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Miss Steinert, who was assigned to do the Petrillo personality, spent four hours with him straightening out such items as his schooling ("I was still in the fourth grade after nine years, so I quit"), his phobia for germs ("Only it's not like Winchell says. I open them doorknobs without the Kleenex...
During the last six years, many a customer had become a prey to the demoralizing phobia that clerks would refuse to take his money unless he were polite. But last week, almost every big department store was doing its utmost to revive half-forgotten reputations for courtesy...
...most far reaching effect of the gate's truculence has been to instill a phobia against all gates in the malleable minds of Freshmen. Passers-by are shocked to see healthy students balk before the gates, spin around, and scrabble over the walls surrounding the Yard rather than face the mental strain of a passage through the menacing doors...
...leading Padilla-baiter was Vicente Lombardo Toledano, loud-speaking leftist chief of the powerful Latin American Federation of Labor. At San Francisco, declared Lombardo, Padilla had stooged for the U.S. State Department. He had an "anti-Soviet phobia"; his attacks on the Russian delegation had followed the propaganda line of Generalissimo Francisco Franco, pet hate of Latin American labor...
...lustre of Tesla's eccentricity. A meticulous dresser, he never used a handkerchief or collar more than once, could often be seen in white tie & tails feeding pigeons on the steps of the 42nd Street library or St. Patrick's Cathedral. Because of an intense germ phobia, he never shook hands if he could help...