Word: swiveting
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...minority had denounced the match because Von Amsberg had served, at the age of 16, in Hitler's Wehrmacht. Half of Amsterdam's 45 city councilors refused to attend the wedding, as did the rabbis of three leading synagogues. But what really had the cops in a swivet was a bunch of high-spirited university students, who called themselves the Provos (meaning provokers). They came out emphatically against the monarchy, Germans, capitalism, Dutch society in general, and had a number of ingenious notions about how to louse up the official rites. They talked of spiking the city...
...Hara is unquestionably the most famous of living American novelists. Yet he is notoriously discontented with this grudgingly conceded eminence; he is given to complaints that he never won the highbrow vote or the Nobel Prize. And critics who find his work unsatisfactory put him into a considerable swivet...
...victim when he comes through the door. With an ominously metallic rattle, a dumbwaiter suddenly reveals itself behind a false panel in the wall. On it is an order for "two braised steak and chips, two teas without sugar," followed by a demand for "macaroni pastitsio." In a nervous swivet, Ben and Gus pile on their own stale snacks. But the machine is insatiable, asking for "one Char Siu and bean-sprouts." The men shout through a decrepit speaking tube that they have no more. Gus leaves for a drink of water, and the speaking tube instructs Ben to shoot...