Word: spiel
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...funny in a way, particularly since the white Mississippian will nod his head zealously through about two-thirds of the spiel, until he gets the point. Slack-jawed indignation ensues. I am afraid, though, that you have ruined my sardonic joke. I got half way through your cover story before nausea overtook me, and it occurred to me that blind barbarism-in the Congo, in Mississippi-is the one citadel that will not tumble before mockery...
Among the commonest ills of man, ranking close to constipation and headaches, is the wide range of supposed digestive upsets mistakenly described as "acid indigestion." Every day, millions of Americans complain of "heartburn" or "sour stomach." TV commercials spiel endlessly about "acid upset." Some sufferers try to dignify their complaints with such technical terms as hyperacidity and acidosis. By whatever name, the problem is a high-up bellyache, and those who suffer from it in the U.S. lay out $90 million each year for antacids and alkalizers...
...London store where his father is a department manager. His parents provide him with a bowler, a pinstripe, suit that conceals his bowlegs, nylon underwear that crackles when he walks, and a small "pied a terre" (or, foot in the grave) in Kensington. He learns the sales spiel handily enough ("A beautiful shoe, madam, seamless uppers, a discreet buckle and a soft dimple toe, and for a foot like yours with so little adhesion between the phalanges of the toe and the metatarsal joint . . ."), but he is desperately unhappy. Bernard has no friends. He burns with hopeless, timid lusts...
Phillips' low-keyed prose does not match the stately measures of King James's scholars for beauty, but more than compensates by often making clear what they had transliterated word for word from the Hebrew. The King James Version makes Amos 4:6 sound like a fluoridation spiel, translating it: "And I also have given you cleanness of teeth in all your cities." Phillips recaptures the original sense with his phrasing: "It was I who gave you hungry mouths in all your cities." And in Micah 6:16, where the King James has the Lord meaninglessly warning "that...
...even after Bert and Harry are back, one problem will remain. Their old cartoons delighted audiences, but from 1958 on did not sell much beer. Now, with Piel's fighting to hold its place as the fourth-selling beer in New York,* Bert and Harry Piel's spiel may be a little hard er. As Bert will say after the election: "The free ride is over. All hitchhikers off. This time we have a new theme: 'I'm laughing with Piel's in my hand...