Word: synonyms
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...numbers-1984 will pass, not Nineteen Eighty-Four-but as a man of letters, who wanted to change the world by changing the word. A word that surely requires alteration today has been misused since the '50s. The author's name is not a synonym for totalitarianism. It is in fact the spirit that fights the worst tendencies in politics and society by using a fundamental sense of decency-Orwellian, in the best sense of the word...
...Dickens, Thackeray, Twain and other 19th century writers, which explains why Moscow's attacks, once translated, sometimes seem comically grandiloquent. The colorful terms of last week entered the Russian-English dictionaries at the beginning of the century. Ignoramus, first popularized in England in the 1600s as a synonym for dunce, is Latin for "we do not know." In the original Russian version, the word is nevezhda, which means "an ignorant person." Krokodilovy slyozy, which translates literally as "tears of the crocodile," derives from a Russian fable similar to the Western tale. Hullabaloo, which harks back at least...
...proposal? Negotiability ought to be a legitimate consideration in arms-control policymaking. It means simply keeping the enterprise within the realm of the possible and not wasting valuable time on mutual stonewalling. But during the first two years of the Reagan Administration, negotiability was almost a dirty word, a synonym for accommodation and pre-emptive concessions. Officials were chastised for even mentioning it in meetings...
...Alpine race because he could not unstick frozen wheel nuts to change a tire, Campagnolo invented the release system now widely used for removing wheels, also devised improved gearshifts and some 50 other items (but not a complete bicycle) that have made the nickname "Campy" cycledom's synonym for efficiency...
...inventory of American slang now, however, can be somewhat disappointing. Slang today seems to lack the playful energy and defiant self-confidence that can send language darting out to make raffish back-alley metaphorical connections and shrewdly teasing inductive games of synonym...