Word: shibboleth
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...like the national civil rights legislation passed this summer, the Housing Bill is a definite move forward and probably will be further strengthened. The old and specious shibboleth advanced by the Real Estate Board--that the bill violates "fundamental rights of the owners of private property"--has not served to cancel more basic claims of racial equality. The city has established, at least in principle, that its sizable minority groups will be protected in their efforts to improve their living conditions. Furthermore, any future breakdown of housing segregation will be doubly advantageous, since it will help break down the unofficial...
Answering these statements, John M. Coffee Jr., grDv., editor emeritus of the "Scribe," maintained that the newspaper "was being made a shibboleth" in a feud between Andover and Divinity Halls. In a statement to the CRIMSON, Coffee said the real cause of the Association's vote was the reaction to his article in the latest issue of the "Scribe." Coffee had criticized plans for placing a crucifix in Andover Chapel "because it represents--rightly or otherwise--Popery in many eyes...
...words flew by -retrousse . . . shibboleth . . . oleaginous . . .-Doris Ann hardly knew what they all meant. Finally came cicerone, which Doris Ann thought had a final "i". Marjorie got it right, but she promptly missed farraginous. Doris Ann got that one right, but she still had one more word to go before she could claim the winning $500 and the free trip to New York...
...Boston newspapers. Sample sentence: "He has marshaled his oft-reiterated and unproved allegations to obfuscate and postpone decisions." White asked some 200 students and parents whether obfuscate meant reverse, change, confuse or rearrange. Only 23 knew it meant confuse Results were similar for such standbys as plebiscite, inculcate, anomaly, shibboleth, indigenous, cataclysms, aggrandizement tantamount, statutory, encroachment, implementation and peripheral...
...morning ago I ran across the words "unprincipled", "irresponsible", "invidious", and "shibboleth" in your paper. I confess that I am not up to all these big words before breakfast, since I am a simple man, and especially since (as possible subsequent investigation by secret-agents Wyant and Poskanzer will bear out) I am only an English major. Yet the April 26th letter, by the individuals mentioned above, confuses me a little. Far from wishing to submerge myself in this blood-bath of fierce partystrife, I would merely like to tender timidly some thoughts which are in no way representative...