Word: ploy
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...hurts, as Willis always puts it, to "sweeten a contact." As he zooms along to corporate heights, Willis Wayde seems like the prototype for David Riesman's "other-directed" personality. He assiduously collects antiques, not because he really likes to, but because he finds it a useful conversational ploy in his business dealings. He poses in front of mirrors to see if his tailored clothes hang with just that offhand casualness that will give him an edge in a stockholders' meeting...
...surprise is only one ploy under the sporting theory. Another is to take advantage of technical rules of pleading, many of which grew out of historical situations that have no counterparts in modern life...
...Playboy Porfirio Rubirosa dispatched two lawyers to the Mexican divorce mill at Cuernavaca. Their legal mission: to find out if Rubirosa's estranged fourth wife, Five-and-Dime Heiress Barbara Mutton, was entitled, during a recent fling in Cuernavaca, to call herself Princess Troubetzkoy. Rubirosa's likely ploy: if Babs is still billing herself as a princess, then maybe her 1951 Cuernavacan divorce from her fourth husband, Lithuanian Prince Igor Troubetzkoy, was no good − and Rubirosa 's marriage to Babs would thus be legally null. In that happy event, Rubirosa could immediately head for the altar...
When up against an obviously superior practitioner of Globemanship, an audacious ploy, one best used by stay-at-homes of an intellectual appearance, is to abandon all pretense about having been to Europe and, indeed, to disclaim all knowledge of and interest in The Continent. The professional Inpatriate will wear a look of complete boredom while Europe is the topic, being careful, of course, not to let his expression be accurately interpreted as one of ignorance. Since, however, even people who have been to Europe are usually bored when others talks about it, the Inpatriate should occasionally interject a question...
...bland expression on your face, your play is this. "Why, I never had to learn any French. My mist . . . uh . . . a girl did all my interpreting." Needless to say, a discrete look around and a man-to-man tone of voice will enhance the effectiveness of this ploy. If your tormentor has been feminine, it is safe to say she'll leave you alone for the rest of the evening...