Word: synonyms
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
During 15 years of brutal civil war among religious and political clans, fought mainly by Christian and Muslim militiamen, Beirut became a synonym for savagery. Last week for the first time authorities put out an official estimate of the rivers of blood spilled through Lebanon and its 3.4 million population. The casualty toll, largely civilian: 144,240 people slain, 197,506 wounded and 17,415 missing. Most of the missing persons were abducted by rival militias, and are now presumed dead...
...goes according to plan, a Feb. 1 cease-fire will end the 12-year civil war that has claimed 75,000 lives and made El Salvador a synonym for bloodshed and human-rights abuses. Once disarmed, the rebels plan to form a political party, while the government will slash its armed forces from 56,000 to about...
...maybe not just any recession. General Motors, that synonym for American enterprise, sounds a massive retreat with unprecedented plant closings and layoffs. Is this a metaphor for the American economy, for American destiny? We are seized with a sudden fear: maybe the current recession is not just a cyclical downturn, which would make it tolerable, but the harbinger of long- term decline. Maybe the bill for the cold war (or the Decade of Greed or the wages of sin -- pick your poison) has come due, and we are now beginning our inexorable descent. Maybe this is not America...
Rhinestone, long a synonym for the meretricious, has its reputation restored in a glamorous collection of brooches, necklaces, tiaras, shoe buckles, bracelets and earrings. Then again, even Styrofoam would glitter on such icons as Marlene Dietrich, Bette Davis, Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn...
...heard all the jokes: we know that "spacy" and "flaky" seem almost to have been invented for California and that in the dictionary California is a virtual synonym for "far out." Ever since gold was first found flowing in its rivers, the Shangri-La La of the West has been the object of as many gibes as fantasies: just over a century ago, Rudyard Kipling was already pronouncing that "San Francisco is a mad city, inhabited for the most part by perfectly insane people" (others might say "insanely perfect"); and more than 40 years ago, S.J. Perelman was barreling down...