Word: sneezer
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...over," and connotes amazement or dread of supernatural forces beyond one's control. Rationalists scorn superstition as a hangover of primitive man's obsolete interpretations of the world. Indeed, nothing seems sillier nowadays than rituals like knocking on wood or chanting "God bless you!" (to prevent the sneezer's soul from flying away). Even so, modern behavioral scientists respect superstition as an enduring expression of the human need to master the inexplicable. "One man's superstition is another's religion," contends Anthropologist...
...Blue Eyes. "When a prominent citizen gets jammed up with the rules," he once wrote, "there are always a lot of folks ready to turn on the brine for him. But when some bezark that no one ever heard of gets found out, they rush him off to the sneezer or jail, with never a sob gulped out in his behalf." Yet when two bezarks awaited execution in Massachusetts in 1927, Runyon turned in a story so unsentimental that his editors refused to run it: "They're frying Sacco and Vanzetti in the morning," ran the lead...