Word: shams
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Where the word "hokum" came from is clear enough. "Hocus pocus" is a veteran in good standing, meaning " to trick, sham or cheat." Obviously it crept into the theatrical vocabulary through the realization that presenting a new play, skit or act full of old stuff is in a sense cheating the audience...
...first night of the encampment, the old soldiers saw a sham battle by new soldiers (Wisconsin National Guardsmen), repelling a landing party from the Great Lakes Naval Training Station...
...have been given German soldiers to endow them with supernormal energy was sodium dihydrogen phosphate. This salt was administered in the form of a drink to the shock troops as they entered battle or during long marches. For psychological reasons other battalions were served with a sham stimulant at the same time, acidulated with tartaric instead of phosphoric acid...
...plain, incontrovertible facts in such terms that even your facile, plasticene minds cannot mistake them. Your faculty are nothing but puppets, and you, fools, you are like the little boys in the streets who pay in the hard earned nickels at the gilt ticket-window, to gape at the sham wonders put before you in the guise of truth...
...brass knuckles. The artillery was present only in imagination. The minnenwerfer (mortar) platoons were fully equipped except for the minnenwerfers. The men were supplied with slings for the latest one-man machine guns, but the weapons themselves were not visible. An air of reality was given to the sham fight by the dashing cavalry and by the motor cycle messengers. The Fascista organization is so strong in Bavaria that the Federal authorities are unable to check the movement, which has now established itself openly as a political force. Adolf Hitler, replying to charges made against him by the Munich Post...