Word: rigueur
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Chickened Out. The decision of whether or not to print words that most readers still consider obscene is one that will not just go away. Four-letter words, and elaborations on them, have become a tool of protest politics and almost de rigueur occurrences on stage, in movies, in books and in the public vocabulary of many celebrities...
...Windsors belong to the jet set's predecessor, the international set, where only old money need apply and natural grounding in elegant living is de rigueur. Within its gracious confines, the duke and duchess are automatically the guests of honor at any party they attend, as though he were still king. It is a circle of friends that dates back to the '20s, and each year its number is shrunk by death. Churchill and Lord Beaverbrook are gone, and so are Viscount Monckton, who negotiated the terms of Edward's abdication, and New York Central Board Chairman...
...villain was Mom and, by extension, women in general. From novels to movies and musicals, the case history dominated the scene. Sooner or later there had to be a flashback to some childhood trauma, and its explanation (unloving mother, weak father, hateful sibling, stolen Teddy bear) became as de rigueur as the revelation scene at the end of a detective novel in which the mastermind explains who done...
...dolls, who do not even have a word for it. The Greeks had a word-orgy. So did the Romans-bacchanalia. Even the underdeveloped Brazilians have a cute word-suruba. In the '30s, I took part in similar divertissements with graduate students of Buenos Aires University; de rigueur attire for the young ladies was a lettuce leaf kept in place with a glob of whipped cream...
...many ways, the Gaullist France of Eastern Europe. The label fits not only in Bucharest's relations with its allies but physically and culturally as well. Fully 65% of Rumania's foreign-language students are learning French; Bucharest even boasts an Arc de Triomphe. Berets are de rigueur in Bucharest's working-class bistros, and the nascent Rumanian film industry-a mere 15 years old-has borrowed French New Wave techniques, along with one of French Director René Clair's cameras, left in the country after a recent filming...