Word: placards
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...spectators along the roadside. Then Nixon asked that the roof of the car be opened, and the two Presidents stood to wave to the crowd, which numbered perhaps 100,000. The people smiled and waved back but did little cheering. Though American flags dotted the route, only one placard was visible. It said pointedly: REVOLUTIONARY DAMASCUS WELCOMES PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON...
...Like a placard bearer of apocalypse, he foretells man's doom from his bloody beginnings. The thesis: man evolved from perverted apes who ate the brains of other apes. Brains being an aphrodisiac, they increased the sex drive, which in turn increased the need for more brain food. This diet increased the size of the ape man's brain and his intelligence. Unfortunately, the skull did not increase as fast as the brain, and the resulting pressure distorted man's view of himself as a part of nature. The squeezed-brain syndrome gave rise...
...freeways, billboards were filled with an eerily staring human eye. Similar eyes glared balefully from a dozen small ads in a single day's newspaper. Television spots showed a grade-school girl playing unconcernedly, then frozen into a prisoner-like pose with a Social Security number on a placard hung from her neck...
...scene was Naples, but a Naples that few would recognize. The cafes, the hotels and the markets were eerily quiet and empty. For infection-wary prostitutes, it was never on weekdays as well as Sundays. Sullen crowds milled in the streets, and people eyed each other with suspicion. A placard outside the Zi' Teresa restaurant - closed by a strike, although there were no customers to speak of anyway - explained the city's unsettled mood. CHOLERA BROUGHT us TO OUR KNEES, it read, NOW WE ARE WAITING FOR THE COUP DE GRACE...
Frequently when Black English sounds ungrammatical to white ears, it is merely conforming to its own rules. Thus, in the demonstrator's placard, the pronoun themself leaves off the standard English -ves ending because them already establishes plurality. Since Black English rarely uses suffixes, neat means the same as the Standard English noun neatness. Black English also does not differentiate between genders of pronouns, so it is perfectly correct for a speaker to say, "He a nice little girl." In unraveling these rules, however, linguists encounter a problem-almost nobody speaks "pure" Black English. Ghetto blacks, hearing their speech...