Word: shaven
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...beard has also been under fire as "a hindrance to spitting and a disturbance to elocution," a symbol of animal lust and corruption, an impediment to gas masks, an affront to pure womanhood. Detractors of the beard might even argue that the shaven jowl is invaluable in time of war: e.g., the Saxons might have won the Battle of Hastings if they had not panicked at sight of the clean-shaven Norman army. (They concluded that it consisted entirely of "Presbyteros"-which is Latin for "priests," Author Reynolds hastily explains, "not Presbyterians-a fantasy far more terrifying...
...Fence Me In. Foes of the beard have been sniping at it for thousands of years, heaping it with vulgarity and ridicule. When, says Reynolds, mustachioed Czar Peter the Great rebuked a Western ambassador for being effeminately clean-shaven, the envoy pertly retorted: "Had my royal master measured wisdom by the beard, he would have sent a goat." Peter, who had a marked tendency to kowtow before degenerate Western ways, was so impressed by this remark that he levied a tax on all Russian beards...
Braque's Painter and Model (1939) was a more ambitious essay in shadow and substance. The black and tan model and black and grey artist-who, unlike clean-shaven, square-cut Braque, sported a spade beard and cheroot-both wavered in uncertain silhouette against the grey and yellow wallpaper. At one moment the figures seemed thin as cardboard; at another they became block-solid...
Libyans for world citizenship. A fair man with a toothbrush mustache and an American accent was saying: "I think I was born in Holland-I think so, mind you." Another young man, very dark and ill-shaven, introduced himself to me crisply: "I am the French press attache of this movement. I was appointed only yesterday, so there is little I can tell you about Garry Davis. However, I can tell you a lot about the Trotskyists, with whom I used to have numerous affiliations...
...head in and announced that the plane was due in 15 minutes. But instead of the scheduled DC-4, it would be a bucket-seat, twin-engine C-46. A tall Chinese in a long, fur-lined gown plucked off his fedora hat and rubbed a handkerchief over his shaven pate. "Ai-yah," he groaned...