Word: soak
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...called Staphylococcus aureus. In laboratory studies, the Harvard team, led by Infectious Disease Specialist Edward Kass, found that the bacterium produces up to 20 times as much toxin as usual in the presence of certain tampon fibers. Kass's group discovered that the fibers -- polyester foam and polyacrylate rayon -- soak up large amounts of magnesium, which is normally present in vaginal tissue and fluid. When the magnesium is removed from the bacterium's environment, the bug responds by churning out great quantities of the deadly toxin...
...imbibe, whose common definitions are to drink and to receive into the mind. The answer choices were (A) dissuade, (B) reward, (C) exude, (D) loosen bonds, (E) refuse help. According to Owen, only 13% of students taking the test marked E.T.S.'s answer, exude, which is the opposite of soak, an archaic definition of imbibe. Review students are taught to spot the experimental section by its heavy cargo of muddy puzzlers and are told to ignore...
Cubs Manager Jim Frey, a minor-league batting champion of 1957, used to soak his bats in motor oil, an appropriate balm for one whose travels led him practically everywhere but to the major leagues. While awaiting promotion with the St. Louis Cardinals, though, Frey once drew near enough to Stan Musial to hear a definition of a doubleheader that stayed with him. "That's when Stanley can get ten hits in one day!" Musial exclaimed. "Think of it, ten hits!" On such optimum expectations, all Cubdom is founded, even in the after-math of three season-ending losses...
...into an awful lot of ex-Harvard assistant professors who are extraordinarily bitter about the place," adds another scientist. For example, one associate professor recently denied tenure said last week that he didn't feel like bothering to answer the University Hall questionnaire: "I told them to go soak their heads...
...themselves are the alarming truths they epitomize. If poorly educated students from impoverished backgrounds are repeatedly told--by coaches, by parents, and yes, by college recruiters--that their only chance of salvation is to mash the other guy head better than their teammates, eventually that sense of desperation will soak in. And equally likely, that sense of desperation will most likely backfire--if not in murder or child abuse, in more subtle, less blatant forms of hostility...