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Author Slobodkin has an artist's eye for significant detail and the kind of gossipy fluency that makes many women's letters easy reading. He has also managed to smuggle into print (suitably disguised) a verb seldom seen in polite English prose since Lady Chatterley's Lover. In fact, Slobodkin has assimilated himself so completely to the somewhat rancid life of his crewmates that some readers may feel that they have listened to a five-hour monologue by a seafaring stablehand...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Books: Sculptor at Sea | 12/31/1945 | See Source »

...George Washington, father of back country and of average (as a verb...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Education: Talking United States | 2/7/1944 | See Source »

...origin of Yankee floored the editors. The best they could do was to indicate the word's earliest use (1765) and its range of meanings. Thus, a Yankee is an American to a foreigner, a New Englander to an American, and a Northerner to a Southerner; as a verb the word is obsolete slang meaning "to hornswoggle...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Education: Talking United States | 2/7/1944 | See Source »

Once before, you wrote, "Mussolini felt badly" but I let it pass, thinking that perhaps his "fine Italian hand" had become calloused (perhaps petrified) and you were using "feel" as a transitive verb...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Letters, Aug. 16, 1943 | 8/16/1943 | See Source »

...verb "to mugg" apparently stems from the dank soil of 19th Century prisons, where "mugger" was synonymous with footpad-"one of the wretched horde who haunt the street at midnight to rob drunken men." Its meaning, as given by the American Thesaurus of Slang: robbery with violence. In New York City muggers usually attack from behind if possible, throwing one arm around the victim's neck, while the assistant muggers frisk the victim...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: CRIME: Harlem Muggings | 3/29/1943 | See Source »

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