Word: racketed
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Ninety per cent of all New York poultry is consumed by Jews, who eat two pounds of kosher fowl per capita per week (see p. 24) and pay an estimated $16,000,000 a year to racketeers thereby. A swarthy man will say a blessing over the broiler when his end finally comes, and pass a sharp knife across his knotted gullet. This man will be a shochet (ritual slaughterer), and he will probably belong to an association ruled by gangsters. Even dressed and plucked, the broiler is not yet free of violence, for if his owner does not string...
...fight the Fatherland. During their absence the Volsteadian debacle closes his lawful business and establishes the lucrative blind pig and speakeasy. Conflict between his remaining son, who now manufactures near beer, "the nearest we will ever got to beer," and Nails, his erst-while truck driver, and present racket king, brings the action to a head with shootings, typewriters, pineapples, and fights in the approved style, with, of course, the appropriate happy ending...
Being myself in the business of helping some of my fellow citizens learn how to be authors, I have read with great interest your quotation from the Author & Journalist in your April 17 issue, which you entitled "Drivel Racket." I know the author of the article you quoted and can vouch for his complete sincerity in his exposure of the gyp games in the literary instruction field...
Last fortnight The Author & Journalist followed its exposé of the heartless "copyright racket" with the report of its investigation into the similar but more lucrative "vanity publishing" field...
London's Morning Post comments on the large number of new words of "America's queer coinage (which so often proves ancient currency disinterred)." E. g.- "Racket-a trick, dodge, scheme, game, line of business or action. 1812." "Skirt-A woman. Now vulgar slang, 1560.'' Unlike Sam Johnson, who occasionally winked (as when he defined "lexicographer" as "a harmless drudge") and who occasionally nodded into Latinic somnolence ("Network-anything reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections"), editors of the S. O. E. D. are always serious but try hard...