Word: scratch
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Ivan Petelka was tired of teaching Canadian immigrants to speak English. It was too tough-making Hollanders, Poles and Italians study a new language from scratch, especially one with such senseless spellings, impossible pronunciations and irregular conjugations. Petelka, an ambitious, 46-year-old ex-Ukrainian who had no trouble mastering eight languages himself, thought he could cook up a simpler system...
...airborne troops, supplied by air, would be a crucial factor if World War III arrived. Few would have believed, a month ago, that 2½ million people could be fed by air. If the U.S. and Britain, now at a low peacetime level, could turn that trick with a scratch force, what could they do if mobilized for war? The answer perceptibly shortened the shadow of the Red Army...
...hotfooted it off to "New York's great public library at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street." To his horror, he found 189 books listed under WORMS, only 22 under WORRY. Obedient to one of his favorite maxims ("Cooperate with the Inevitable"), Carnegie thereupon went to work from scratch. He read everything that "philosophers of all ages have said about worry." He read biographies "from Confucius to Churchill." He interviewed everyone from General Omar Bradley to Dorothy Dix. He spent seven years on How to Stop Worrying. "Let me warn you," says he, "you won't find anything...
Senator Taylor promptly made the most of it. In his Senate office, he hoisted his trouser leg, dropped his sock, and displayed a four-inch scratch suffered, he said, when a Birmingham policeman shoved him into a wire fence...
There was always a first time, decided Jockey Eddie Arcaro, up on Citation. He had it all figured out before the race, as he always has. Said he: "I wish those other horses would scratch out. Then I'd be breathing on Coaltown that first half-mile. Of course, if I go out and kill him off-and let one of those other horses come along and beat us both-they'd have a right to come after me with...