Word: unking
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...defeat. Says Cletis Leonard, a tall, rawboned woman with her silver hair drawn back in a bun: "I sold three quilts at that auction down at the Coon Club last October. Made $200. Maybe I'll do even better next time around." Skinny but indomitable at 95, Floyd ("Unk") Hayter, whose wife Bess thinks the town's big mistake was not getting guns and running the APCO people out when they first appeared, gloomily confronts the future: "If that judge is against us I don't know what we'll do. Jail used...
...seemed arbitrarily low. And it decided to bank on Britain's Rolls-Royce, Ltd. to deliver engines for its 256-passenger L-1011 TriStar super jet for a price too good to be true. Both the C-5A and the Rolls-Royce engine turned out to be riddled with "unk-unks," industry slang for "unknown unknowns." Last October, after cost overruns on the C-5A had enraged Congress, the Air Force reduced its order from 115 to 81, which resulted in a loss to Lockheed of $200 million. Worse yet, Rolls-Royce collapsed under the burden of unexpected costs...
...quarry is not duck but the prized pink-footed goose. Positioning the hunters along a flyway, Thorpe raises his nose and sniffs the wind. His squinty blue eyes search the horizon. Then, lifting his face to the gray sky, he emits a series of harsh, high-pitched cries: "Ung-unk! Ung-unk! Ung-unk...
...instructed countless other guns−from the Queen Mother's private secretary to Actor Richard Todd−on the wily ways of "the loveliest bird that flies." The call of the pinkfoot, says Thorpe, is the most difficult to imitate. By recording the geese's ringing ung-unk on tape, he learned to distinguish between the gander's imperious high bark and the lower cry of the female. Out on the marshes he does both, relying on "sturdy vocal cords and plenty of cover...
...industry has suffered a succession of blows: a slowdown in space exploration, a $6.9 billion cutback in Washington's defense budget, and a fall-off in orders for commercial aircraft. As a result, aerospace-men have come down with a severe case of what they call the "unk-unks"-the "unknown unknowns...