Word: pickwickian
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...Every Pickwickian remembers the drowiness of Dickens' Fat Boy, whose master constantly prods him awake, crying: "Joe! -Damn that boy, he's gone to sleep again." Dickens did not know it, but Joe was a victim of a rare nervous disorder known as narcolepsy* (from the Greek narke, stupor, and lepsis, seizure). When narcoleptics experience certain emotions -anger, fear, grief, amusement-they crumple up, fall sound asleep. Less than 100 cases have ever been reported...
...reference to the Balearics, that "so far as Italy is concerned the integrity of present territories of Spain shall in all circumstances remain intact and unmodified." This said nothing about the large Italian force at present in the Balearics, and Count Ciano may have given his "assurance" in the Pickwickian sense that the Fascists will keep the Reds out of the Balearics and make them safe for the Whites...
Newsstand sales in the British Isles are the virtual monopoly of a Pickwickian middle-class firm on the walls of whose offices hang life-size portraits of members of the family who died for Queen (Victoria) & Country. It was not a matter of direct government censorship last week but of Pickwickian family pride that for the first time all sales of U. S. newspapers and magazines which mentioned King Edward and Mrs. Simpson (see p. 16) abruptly ceased in England. This was such risky tampering with freedom of the press that those responsible retired, self-abashed, behind closed doors. Queries...
...years ago. went to Western Reserve, became a lawyer. He teamed up politically with Cleveland's Tom Johnson and Newton Baker. His particular interest was judicial reform. He affects 19th Century attire and speech, wears old-fashioned stiff collars, voluminous cravats, striped trousers, heavy black coats. His round, Pickwickian cheeks dimple with smiles and he trains his frizzy grey hair to stand out in Dickensian tufts at the sides of his bald head. But his tongue is his greatest member. Trial juries melt before him. At Prague three years ago he reduced 7,000 Czechoslovakians to tears...
Shore dust covered mortals who cloister themselves in the squalid dignity of senior chambers awoke one noon last week from vernal lethargy to the mess call sounded from a Pickwickian bugle. The Dickens' jubilee had included among its enthusiasts that stalwart figure in the green colonial smoking jacket--John Harvard...