Word: prey
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There were a lot of things Johnson did not know. A tarantula is not "an insect whose bite is only cured by musick"; a cassowary is not a bird of prey; and only a jack pudding or zany would believe that pygmies are devoured by cranes. Whether today's lexicographers are wiser is another matter. Johnson may not have known what a masochist was (the eponymous Herr von Masoch had not yet been born to give his name to those who find pleasure in their own pain), but Lexicographer Johnson had a word for the type...
...this is amiably flavorsome matzo-ball soup opera. Gertrude Berg is flawless in her comic timing, wry-arch in gesticulation, a singsong bird of prey who pounces on the feeblest line for a resounding laugh. For wit, there are Jewish folk inflections; for character, stereotypes; for comic insight, racial in-group jokes. Following up on his 1959 hit, A Majority of One, Spigelgass proves that he can bring in greenback gushers without any risky drilling for dramatic art. He is a situation tinker, and his vocation is to be not a playwright but a millionaire...
...competition for markets bids fair to be a more fruitful cause of war than was ever in the past the ambition of princes or the bigotry of priests. The peoples of Europe fling themselves, like hungry beasts of prey, on every yet unexploited quarter of the world... But always while they divide the spoil, they watch one another with a jealous eye; and sooner or later, when there is nothing left to divide, they will fall upon one another. That is the real meaning of your armaments; you must devour or be devoured. And it is precisely these trade relations...
Feel of the Game. Every coach knows a good player when he sees one, can devise clever strategy to prey on an opponent's weakness. But when to substitute and when not to is the key to the fast-moving play, and Auerbach has what basketball men call the ''feel" of the game. He seems to know instinctively when a player starts to go sour, has a rare sixth sense for getting just the right man-into the pivot, the corner, the backcourt-at precisely the right moment. And because he does, he has survived...
...human body, according to Canetti, bristles with power. The most innocent-seeming gesture recalls the primitive seizing and devouring of prey. "The hand's real glory derives from the grip," writes Canetti, "the central and most often celebrated act of power." The hard, unyielding rows of teeth resemble smoothly polished stone weapons, and in an open mouth often appear menacing. Even the way a person sits in a chair may reveal whether he is, at heart, gripping a throne or a horse or another human being.' Canetti has small patience for those who think man's basic...