Word: phrasings
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Electoral politics" is a loaded and ambiguous phrase. By not clarifying what he means, Cohen has obscurred current PBHA policy, and has treated a highly complex issue in a most superficial manner...
...when in Rome, to speak as the Romans do or to rely on Italian cabbies speaking English (with brio, no doubt, and sprezzatura). In some respects, it comes down to a question of whether 'tis better to give or to receive linguistic torture. The treachery of the phrase book, as every neophyte soon discovers, is that you cannot begin to follow the answer to the question you've pronounced so beautifully -- and, worse still, your auditor now assumes you're fluent in Swahili. Yet sticking to English, it's easy to feel that you've never left home...
...always greener on the other side of the fence. No, not at all. Fences have nothing to do with it. The grass is greenest where it is watered." Moral: "When crossing over fences, carry water with you and tend the grass wherever you may be." He recalls the Greek phrase he learned as a seminary student: asbestos gelos -- unquenchable laughter. "I traced it to Homer's Iliad, where it was used to describe the laughter of the gods." Moral: "He who laughs, lasts...
...future of the old nation-state. We are talking about a wider opening, and that is the hour of Europe. It also offers new opportunities to the Germans. That is in keeping with the mood here: the Fatherland is Germany, the future is Europe. That is today's phrase...
...urged top military leaders there to back Gorbachev to the hilt. But behind her public exhortations lie deep doubts about his chances. She sees the emergence of Boris Yeltsin as a particular reason for pessimism; she regards him as an unguided missile, and has privately characterized him in a phrase that could raise hackles both in the U.S.S.R. and closer to home. "He is like an Irishman," she says...