Word: underworld
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...jungle 30 miles from Singapore one morning last week stumbled a tired, filthy, quaking figure. Inquisitive Singapore detectives found Rubber Magnate Eng Hong Soon singularly unhelpful. By following the underworld rule of silence and paying out $20,000 ransom, Eng managed to emerge alive from the hands of one of the kidnaping gangs that have lately been making life miserable for Singapore's 100-odd Chinese millionaires...
...life in companionship with violence. As a combat marine during World War II, he fought through the landings on Guadalcanal, Guam and Bougainville. As the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's tough, tireless crime reporter for 20 years, Ted Link has coolly padded through the back alleys of the underworld, has probably written more about crime than any other U.S. newsman. Last week, as usual, violence was Reporter Ted Link's companion. This time, it was his own doing...
Couplets for Hector. Mani's most cherished art form is the miroloy, the dirge with which keening womenfolk usher the Maniot out of a harsh world that neither man nor God seemingly made. More a lament for a hero being taken to the underworld than for a Christian going to his reward-even as she makes the sign of the cross, the grieving widow will say, "Charon took him"-the miroloy mirrors in its 16-syllable line the lament of Andromache over the body of Hector. At graveside, the chief mourner's voice becomes a howl of hysteria...
...hardy perennials and occasional exotics, cultivated by a corps of devoted lexicographers, is consistently challenged by a weedy invasion of the vulgate. Professors may still protest, but the public -and most authorities-tends to silence them. Says one philologist: "It was once thought that most slang came from the underworld, but nowadays a great deal of it comes from the average middle-class types who belong to golf clubs and bridge clubs and like to go skindiving...
...words are listed out of a possible 45,000 -they will probably agree that the selections in most cases are shrewd and useful. The authors have worked both sides of the street in every major slang-producing area-advertising, journalism, sports, show business, politics, Wall Street, the underworld, the armed forces, teenagers, jazz musicians, racial minorities and Texas. The contributions from Negro and Yiddish slang are particularly striking. Prudes may be disturbed by the volume of sexual references, but there is a fascination about the many different, often unlikely contexts in which sexual terms are employed in American slang...