Word: smothering
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...devoid of acrimony and humorlessness. Johnson never mauled his opponents. For a period of rounds he would lay back, content with controlling the other fighter and enjoying himself. From time to time, he would challenge his opponent to take a shot at his unprotected chin and then smother the billow, accompanying the defensive maneuver with an offensive flurry of his own. A showman, as well as a master of ring psychology, Johnson converted a fight from a contest into a personal exhibition. He would defeat his opponents only after he had made them feel and appear totally unnecessary. In effect...
...some who are hungry for it . . . these people are on a quest. If you are one of these people you know this about yourself. . . . When you come to acid, you come with the heat of a man given a single last chance. . . . You are without spirituality. So you smother your senses in the garbage of color, light and sound. Here, among the infant molecules of thought, you are subjected to the cool heat of liberation. For each of us is the entirely of All Being in particular...
...will protect the language from all those oversimplifiers and overcomplicators who kill meaning with shouts or smother it with cautious mumbles? In theory, certain professions should serve as a sort of palace guard sworn to defend the mother tongue with their lives. Alas, the enemy is within the gates. Educators talk gobbledygook about "non-abrasive systems intervention" and "low structure-low consideration teaching style." Another profession guilty of non-defense is lexicography. With proud humility today's dictionary editor abdicates even as arbiter, refusing to recognize any standards but usage. If enough people misuse disinterested as a synonym...
...Pinkerton's, the venerable private constabulary that hunted down Butch Cassidy and was McClellan's private OSS in the Civil War, is marketing 'the new Pinkerton Bomb Blanket, a four-by-four 18-layer core of high-tensile ballistic nylon covered by fire-retardant Herculite to smother incendiary bombs...
...waved hello to Roger. After he had passed the table. Roger turned to me, pointed in the boy's direction, and said," May his hair catch fire. May he burn with his books. May he smother in his smile...