Word: sobriquet
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Wilson--which no longer likes the sobriquet "facility"--was an oasis of reason and calmness last week. Where conversation at Commons and in the clubs hinged on "bids," "sections" and "preferentials," Lodge members could talk of anything from world affairs to classes and even--and this is a crime in club circles--grades. One Lodge member contends that this difference exists all year round; in the clubs, he says, no-one discusses anything but weekends, dates and dances; at the Lodge, it is possible to discuss literature, philosophy and politics...
Many writers have noted that MacLeish's hero (alias Job) gets his sobriquet from the present-day practice of calling American business executives by their initials. But no-one seems to have mentioned that he also gets it from the widespread ancient Hebrew custom of omitting vowels from the written language...
Instead of the trite sobriquet Explorer, the U.S. moon should have been dubbed Minerva ; for, like the goddess of old, it too sprang from Jupiter's head...
Barrel-chested, walrus-mustached K.I. Singh, 54, onetime Indian army clerk and practicing homeopathic physician, earned the sobriquet "Robin Hood of the Himalayas" when he began parceling out land to peasant farmers during a nationwide revolt against the autocratic Rana dynasty in 1950. Worried by Singh's deeds of derring-do as head of a band of ragged Nepalese army irregulars, nervous Indian army "observers" stationed in Nepal clapped him into jail. He escaped the Indians, but was picked up again. One night in 1952 Singh broke jail and led a coup that captured the capital's airfield...
...says he, "is to make the legends come true.' While 15 other local columnists in the city's four dailies have come and gone in the past two decades, Caen's lighthearted legend-doctoring has filled six newspaper columns a week since 1938, earned him the sobriquet "Mr. San Francisco." and poured over into five profitable books about the city he calls Baghdad-by-the-Bay. The latest, Herb Caen's Guide to San Francisco, had sold 20,240 copies by last week, and is one of the few local guidebooks in publishing history to have...