Word: slang
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...hostage release until National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane verified through official sources that the convoy had reached the Syrian border. Then, at 2:05 p.m., White House Spokesman Larry Speakes made a brief statement, including the President's response. "That's very welcome news," said Ronald Reagan. Using pilots' slang for airborne, he added, "Let me know when they are wheels...
...basically Spanish in structure with Hispanicized words borrowed from English ("Donde esta el vacuum cleaner?"). The confluence of the two languages is also producing new verb forms that are not found in any textbook. "Quieres monkear?" is one way of saying "Want to hang out?" Borrowed from the slang infinitive "to monkey around," the Spanglish verb monkear is used in the same way as truckear, which refers to working around trucks, shopear (i.e., at the market) and mopear (the kitchen floor...
...Carl Icahn, who holds more than 26% of the outstanding TWA shares. The airline's executives might try a leveraged buyout, which would involve management's borrowing money to purchase the company. But Eastern Airlines has said that it was considering a bid for TWA. According to Wall Street slang, TWA is now "in play." Stay tuned...
...Always together, eternally apart, these two ironic superheroes have a mediating companion, the impish cutpurse Phillipe (Matthew Broderick again). Not a bad premise for a wistful romance, especially when it stars three such appealing actors. Alas, the script (by Edward Khmara, Michael Thomas and Tom Mankiewicz) jumbles modern slang with chivalric sentiment; and Director Richard Donner (The Omen, Superman) is no spellbinder of medieval melancholy. "I believe in miracles," says the evil bishop (John Wood) who laid on the curse. "It's part of my job." Making miracles is Donner's job--and, Dick, you're fired...
...about their "body counts" (measuring progress in the war by lives taken, not land taken). Viet Nam gave rise to an elaborate language of deceit. Officialese was done in the Latinate: incursion, attrition, pacification, termination with extreme prejudice. The linguistic underside of that was the flip, sinister slang that the American G.I.s contrived: dinky dau (crazy), numbah ten (the worst), Charlie (the Viet Cong), grease (kill). The antiwar movement built a massive vocabulary of rhetorical excess about "fascist Amerika." Officers lied in writing up citations for their men and themselves. The Viet Nam Memorial is, in a sense, the most...