Word: rituals
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Knives slashed across the throats of two sheep, and their blood gushed out onto the quay jutting into Istanbul harbor. The traditional Moslem ritual of sacrifice was supposed to guarantee a safe voyage for a blue-and-gray-hulled exploration vessel named Sismik-1. As the 1,200-ton Turkish ship steamed toward the Dardanelles, she was saluted by a cacophony of ship's whistles...
...bureaucracy and licentiousness became the ordure of the day. "We are arrived at the zenith of vice," boomed Juvenal, "and posterity will never be able to surpass us." Perhaps not, but it seems to be making a vigorous effort. The massage salons of American towns are versions of Petronian ritual; Penthouse and Hustler proliferate on New York newsstands; Pompeii had its pornography memorialized in frescoes...
...Ritual Slaughter. What is wrong here-very wrong-is the dreary familiarity of the theme, the reworking, still again, of English working-class desperation, the sour brutality of the language, which often sounds too toplofty and aphoristic for the people speaking it ("I'm an apostolic alcoholic." "Marriage is one of the few surviving forms of ritual slaughter...
...there is nothing wrong with picking a favorite from one's own country; it is part of the ritual of most sports. Baseball fans throw their allegiance behind teams for no other reason than that they play home games in their city. College alumni support their old school's football teams. Even the Greeks of the ancient Olympic games, the ideal for organizers of the modern Olympiad, rooted for representatives of their regions...
...South, there's a social and economic elite. We're the prominent people in town. There's a tendency to think that because I've been accepted by God, I'm better than other people." He suggested that what he termed a humbling ritual might help relieve the "disharmonies" so common in small towns: "One thing I wish the Southern Baptist Church did-as the Primitive Baptists do-is the washing of feet, one of the most moving Christian experiences...