Word: virago
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...hoyden; if lewd, a minx; if lovely, a nymph; if lovely and black-eyed, a houri (that comes from an Arabian word, he parenthesized with a smack of his lips). Now, you may think there is no difference between a vixen, for which are wrongly substituted the obsolete words 'virago' and 'termagant,' and a shrew. But there is! A shrew is always a brawling woman, while a vixen is merely bad-tempered...
...stingier. Joe's bitterest pill was to watch his youngest brother David, a hypocritical prig, become the only financial success in the family. Joe's letters home were optimistic to the last, but long before the end he found himself a settled failure, saddled with a virago wife, threatened more & more by the insanity that finally...