Word: precious
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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Since Friedrich Woehler a hundred years ago accidentally manufactured urea, scientists have synthesized more things than exist naturally in the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms. Carbon is the base of most of these new products. As diamond it is the most precious natural substance, as coal the most valuable. Carbon plus oxygen gives carbon monoxide, whence grows a myriad of compounds; carbon plus hydrogen gives methane, and its myriad; carbon plus nitrogen gives cyanogen, and its myriad; C plus N plus H gives hydrocyanic acid; C plus N plus H plus O gives urea. There are 400,000 carbon derivatives...
...suppositions of the young inspectors. "Open those boxes," they cried. "No," answered the Grand Rabbi. "I won't. Not those." The young men therefore opened the boxes themselves and discovered in them the laws of Moses but not a single diamond. They were the Grand Rabbi's precious tvillim...
...that on public occasions bad hats, seedy coats, and pepper-and-salt trousers should be laid aside. The suspicious diamonds displayed by the itinerant tradesmen who replenish their wardrobes from the refuse of our own would in themselves be a sufficient caution against an extravagant display of gold and precious stones in the way of rings, studs, and scarf-pins; and that dress waistcoats are inappropriate companions to sack coats of a morning is a universally acknowledge fact...
Imprimis, color: avicula margaritifera, the pearl oyster, is a capricious mother. Sometimes her offspring is white, sometimes pink, yellow, blue, black, but unless they are grotesquely malformed, all are precious. In the Far East, cream yellow is the favorite tint because it shows to excellent advantage against the Oriental skin. Similarly, Westerners prefer pink pearls; not a deep pink, which is almost invariably muddy, but a pale rosée. Color can best be examined by placing the pearl on white cotton under a strong natural light...
Among countries where wine is considered less precious than cash are France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Luxembourg, Hungary, Tunis and Greece...