Word: utensils
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That once elegant and utile implement, the toothpick, passes from the scene in an ever-widening social circle. The massive, rounded hardwood utensil with which modern hostesses and bartenders spear canapes and Martini olives was never intended to explore dental apertures, although it might serve for a murder weapon in a pinch. Let Mr. Wenner, the perfectionist, find a modern name for this modern thing. But I warn him that "skewerette" is barred...
...rebellion of New York's charwomen showed that a once-indispensable utensil was not outmoded. No longer, they declared, would they clean cuspidors...
...damn" [TIME, Jan. 7]? ... The latter expression means nothing. A tinker's dam was really a dam made of clay, which the traveling tinkers used to surround a spot on a pan or kettle to keep the solder from spreading or running until it cooled, while [the utensil was] being repaired. As soon as the solder cooled, the dam was thrown away as useless and worthless. Hence . . . "tinker's dam" to denote something having no value...
...Some Churchillian epithets: "Whipped jackal . . . tattered lackey . . . merest utensil . . . Italian flop." * No kin to the fame Strong Boy of Boston
...Alcohol. Some of the most expensive restaurants had bacteria counts as high as 4,800 to a cup (test is made by swabbing out a utensil with wet sterile cotton and culturing the swab). The maximum the law allows is 100. One drug store had 86,000 bacteria to a cup-no surprise to customers who have watched lunch-counter dishwashing with horrified fascination. Some New York City beer glasses, which usually get a split-second rinse in lukewarm water, had a count of 55,000, but in a survey of an unnamed city last year the Public Health Service...