Word: swearing
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Mormons didn't smoke and didn't chew and didn't go around with the boys that did. They didn't have to because they were almost always an overwhelming majority. Neither did they swear. But they were a great people for dancing, which was secondary only to a religion of revelation and thundering oratory on damnation and brimstone...
...swearing there is no specific contraction of the diaphragm [as in laughter and weeping], but there is a general increase in neuromuscular tension, an increase in blood pressure and an acceleration of its flow, and a rise in the amount of sugar in the blood, respiration is accelerated, and there is a general feeling of tension which is gradually reduced as the swearing proceeds. ... [It] is a psychological means of keeping the organism physiologically clean." Dr. Ashley-Montagu approves swearing among females. "Today, instead of swooning or breaking into tears, [women] will swear and then do something useful...
...feature of Dorothy Donegan's swing piano playing is her footwork. Newcomers at Elmer's Cocktail Lounge sometimes swear that she has a drum concealed under the piano. She has not. That incessant triple-fortissimo thud that punctuates Dorothy's improvisations comes simply from Dorothy's ample feet, hitting the floor boards in loud, unconscious ecstasy...
Inside the thickly armored walls of a light tank, with the traps buttoned up and only tiny periscope slits for ventilation, the temperature reaches fantastic heights -some tankers swear to 180°. Through the slits swirls desert dust, caking on the sweating faces of the four crew members into a brown paste. Beads of sweat trickle down from under their leather helmets and goggles, curl around their noses and cheekbones. Even dust masks, that they wear to filter out the dust, do not save them from coughs and rasping "tank throat...
...unhappily, both in tonnage and use, these metals, though strategic, are all pipsqueaks compared to the basic scarce ones -steel and copper and zinc. There are still many doubters who swear that the "scarcity" of base metals is an illusion caused by wasteful use and chaotic allocation methods (TIME, Aug. 3). But so long as the U.S. war machine must have more of them than WPB can find, it cannot run at capacity...