Word: synonyms
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Thirty-five years later, an English casketmaker named William Banting became famous by pioneering the concept of a low-carbohydrate diet, which helped him lose 50 lb. He published his results in the 1864 "Letter on Corpulence," and the plan became so popular that banting became a synonym for dieting across Britain. (See nine kid foods to avoid...
...Some say a group of explorers passing through lost 15,000 pesos where the town now stands. The place was called 15,000 because that's what the explorers would ask for every time they came back to search for the cash. The town's name has become a synonym for bad luck. But malevolence may be at the origin as well. Fernando Farro, a local farmer, says Quince Mil takes its name from the amount of money the Peruvian government gave Russian fortune-seekers at the turn of the 20th century to eliminate Amazonian tribes and open the area...
...cultural phenomenon. I Can Has Cheezburger?, for instance, pokes fun at an oft-maligned, inscrutable household pet, appealing to cat lovers and others. (Huh is allergic.) FAIL Blog has helped popularize fail as both a noun and an exclamation, not to mention an easier-to-spell synonym for schadenfreude. Another site, This is Photobomb, gives a name to otherwise perfectly good photos spoiled by an interloper - think streakers in the background of a wedding shot. "Everybody has seen it. Nobody knew what to call it," says...
...resources and esteem. As men lose that claim, they lose the instruments by which they have traditionally controlled society. A lot of people see that as fitting punishment. There weren't any women among the high-profile malefactors in last fall's financial meltdown. Maleness has become a synonym for insufficient attentiveness to risk. Journalists have lately been having a field day with a study by two Cambridge University professors, J.M. Coates and J. Herbert, who sampled the testosterone levels of London traders and found they positively correlated with high-profit trading days. Of course, nobody harped on this research...
...Farm fuels can sound like the ultimate win-win situation, reducing our dependence on carbon-intense fossil fuels while boosting demand for American farm products. And they're "renewable," which has become a kind of synonym for green. But years ago, researchers began raising concerns about the direct emissions created by the heavy machinery and petroleum-based fertilizers it takes to grow corn and other biofuel feedstocks, the energy-intensive plants that convert the crops into fuel and the trucks that transport the fuel to market. A slew of studies have concluded that when you include all these life-cycle...