Word: shorthand
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...record store or listings in a newspaper is music that is not other things--not jazz or rock or folk. But this distinction is not rigid. There are cases, like the Chronos Quartet or George Gershwin, that straddle several of these categories. The word classical is, at best, a shorthand term for a body of music that most people recognize but that nobody can define with absolute precision...
...1980s that understanding of the term seemed to disappear. In the decade's dismissive shorthand, feminism came to mean denigrating motherhood, pursuing selfish goals and wearing a suit. Whereas feminism was hip and fashionable in the '70s, antifeminism became socially acceptable in the '80s. First the fundamentalist right, then the White House -- and ultimately Hollywood, television and many journalists -- held feminism responsible for "every woe besetting women," Faludi writes, "from mental depression to meager savings accounts, from teenage suicides to eating disorders to bad complexions...
Tsongas' befuddlement over his schedule can serve as a metaphor for the plight of his underfunded and ill-organized campaign as it struggles to transform New Hampshire hoopla into a full-throated national crusade. But the where-am-I-going question is also an apt shorthand for the unpredictable Democratic race itself, a bizarre contest that has made political pundits look as reliable as racetrack touts...
...spews platitudes at ethnic voters. The guy who patronizes women on the issue of sexual harassment. The big-city police chief who downplays his department's gang beating of an errant motorist. What don't these folks do? They don't "get it." Suddenly the phrase is everywhere, a shorthand K.O. punch that vaporizes opponents by skewering their lack of social intelligence. And for public figures it can be fatal. If you just don't get it, you're hopelessly out of touch...
...cities from Tucson to Tacoma, the term Los Angelization has become shorthand for the complex of urban problems that spring from trying to absorb huge influxes of new people. As residents of fast-growing Western cities contemplate the noxious haze descending on their skylines, the cookie-cutter subdivisions springing up on previously untrammeled hillsides and in pristine deserts, the freeway-choking traffic jams and the youth gangs dealing crack on their street corners, they fear that L.A.'s present could be their future, and the prospect throws them. When people in San Diego conjure up a Boschian vision...