Word: vexes
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...R.A.F. first learned about the little creatures in 1923 and called them gremlins -probably from the obsolete Old English-transitive verb greme, meaning: to vex. Yet it was not until World War II that the R.A.F. really got to know the gremlins. Then they learned that a female gremlin is a finella and that the babies are widgets. Flyers also learned that gremlins must always be referred to as them; gremlins prefer them to they or it or he and she because them conveys a feeling of the gremlin's immanence and nameless power...
Sensible, white-topped Elmer Davis, who is gradually taking charge of some matters that vex the U.S. people, used some plain and sensible language to tell off one of last week's chief people-vexers. He wrote to Boss James Caesar Petrillo of the American Federation of Musicians...
...issue of the closed shop arose again last week to vex the President. His labor-management conference, instead of agreeing on a program to end strikes, stumbled over an old block: the closed shop...