Word: phrasings
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...cheep as inebriates of Singapore used to say. Mei Fooy is the Chinese name for Standard Oil. Shouting Mei Fooy out loudly once saved the life of Lucy Aldrich, John D. Rockefeller Jr.'s sister-in-law, when in 1923 Chinese bandits captured her. It was the only phrase she knew; and the bandits, if they knew not its potency, knew its beneficence. They quickly released...
...zest of youth; here at Harvard, a tired savoir faire is said to have taken their place. Harvard might, indeed, merely sigh, or even yawn, if this were true, but, sadly enough for the erudite gentlemen who delight in classifying the University and all its contents with one clever phrase, not all the instinct of curiosity is purged by a dose of indifference. There are fire-engines and fireengines, but a whole laboratory class in Boylston will rush to the windows to watch one rush down Massachusetts Avenue (although some hint at ulterior motives for this interest). Airplanes...
...Senator Heflin "makes" almost every issue of your magazine, and in every issue his name is invariably written with the phrase ". . . who mortally hates and fears the Roman Pope." Sometimes you do it twice or thrice in a single issue. If I see it again, I'll scream. No one hates the Roman Pope more than I do, but this constant repetition is getting nerve-wrecking. If you must explain this not wholly unique hobby of Senator Heflin's, whenever you write his name, for God's sake sit down and compose fifty or more variations...
...natural associations of the catch phrase thinker with the word "melodrama" are the mustachio and hound dogs, the Tennesseean Montagues and Capulets, and the revolving saw that yearns for the hero's throat. But along Catfish Row, in the negro tenement district of Charleston, murder, knife behind back, walks hand in hand with music. The very name of melodrama was derived of this union. Modern usage of the word had its birth in the musically accompanied plays of the mauve decade, when "Hearts and Flowers," various funeral marches, and "After the Ball" were softly breathed by violins below the stage...
...result, last week, Secretary of State Kellogg, Mexican Ambassador Don Manuel C. Tellez and Governor Fuller received copies of a letter to Governor Fuller from Senor R. G. Dommguez, Mexican Consul at Boston. ". . . An offensive phrase against the Mexicans," protested Consul Dommguez. cannot let this phrase go unheeded. . . . I duly protest before your Excellency for the harmful offense hurled by your above-mentioned employee...